The Ward
by ketren
Summary: Gen, AU. In 1980, Voldemort won. Harry's parents and their allies fled to live safely in total isolation. But 15 years later, when a wounded Bellatrix breaches the walls of their sanctuary, Harry realizes his parents haven't told him everything - and to save those he loves, he'll have to face whatever destiny awaits him in the world beyond.
1. The Woman in the Woods

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 **Full Summary:**

Harry has lived his entire life within the borders of the Ward, an immense magical barrier protecting his family and their allies from the certain death waiting in the world beyond.

Life should pretty much be hell: monsters lurk in the woods and hills, dementors and lethifolds sweep through the air, and without magic to keep the bad stuff at bay, everyone's had to get...crafty. But none of that matters. To Harry, the Keep is home. For fifteen years, he and his parents and friends have lived in isolation—and even something like peace.

But when a wounded stranger breaches the security of their makeshift home, Harry realizes there's a lot he doesn't know about his world. His parents haven't told him the whole truth, about the strange destiny that waits for him in the magical world.

The Ward is a dangerous place. The world beyond is more dangerous still. But Harry will need to brave both if he's going to save their strange sanctuary—his home—and the family he loves within it.

 **Note:** To be totally clear, everything up till the summer of 1980, right before Harry's birth, happened exactly as it did in canon...and from there, things get a little weird. But stay with me. :)

 **Rating: T** for some violence and language, nothing crazy but please use discretion, etc. etc.

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 **The Ward**

 **Part One**

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 _The Woman in the Woods_

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"There's someone in the woods," Ginny panted, and then she paused to take a breath. Her cheeks were ruddy with exertion. "It's...a stranger," she added slowly, as if she couldn't believe it herself.

Harry and Neville, who had been preparing the morning's catch, exchanged bemused glances. They sat outside by the firepit, taking advantage of the long light of the late August evening.

"There are no strangers," Harry replied at last, equally uncertain, though he set his knife down anyway. He hated cleaning fish, and even a silly excuse to stop was better than no excuse at all. "Probably it was a hidebehind or something; Emmeline said she saw one lurking round the wall the other day. Did you run all the way back?"

"It _wasn't,_ " Ginny insisted, cheeks flushing redder. She came to sit beside them on one of the stones that doubled as seats. Her basket, which she lowered to the ground, was heavy with hedgehog mushrooms and bright chanterelles. The leather strap of her bow and quiver had pulled against her chest. With some reluctance, she slipped it off and set the weapons on the ground as well. "I'm telling you, it was a person. A woman."

"What did she look like?" Neville asked. He, at least, was still dutifully cutting out the bones of his salmon.

"I dunno. Like a woman. Dark hair, a bit stooped over."

"An erkling, then?"

"It was a bit big for an erkling, Harry."

"You _are_ still calling it an 'it,'" Neville observed.

" _Her_ , then. Honestly. I should just go back and find her on my own."

"Yeah, and what's with that, anyway? _You_ running all the way back here because of something in the woods?"

"It wasn't because of something in the woods," Ginny retorted hotly, brown eyes flashing. "Some _thing_ I can handle. But I don't know what to do with some _one._ And neither would you."

"Alright, alright," Harry grumbled, feeling appropriately chastised. Like her mum, Ginny could really take it out of you if she felt she'd been wronged, and Harry wasn't in the mood to deal with his friend's temper.

"Could be a kelpie not in horse form," Neville added nonchalantly.

Harry half-expected another of Ginny's glares, but she had deflated, toying with the edges of the basket. "I dunno. I really don't think it was—I mean, you know how kelpies look sort of warped in any other form, but she was hunched over, so I didn't have the best look at her…"

"Well, I for one, am desperate to find out what this thing is. All of us ought to go together. Just as soon as we're done with the fish," Harry said, pointedly resuming his work.

"I see what you're doing," Ginny replied, rolling her eyes. Nonetheless, she drew a hunting knife from her boot and pulled one of the salmon toward her. Harry smothered a grin.

Between the three of them, they worked steadily in the half-light, their fingers sure from years of practice. If you let go and lost yourself a bit in the routine, it wasn't actually that bad, Harry thought. The firepit where they sat lay just atop the hillside, and as they slowly worked through the last of the fish, they had a fair view of their little world.

Meandering down the hillside below was a stone path that veered off in several directions: right to the ivy-covered outbuildings, left toward the wheat field and vegetable garden, or straight ahead, right on through the north gate and outside of the wall. Even now, Harry could see Emmeline Vance patrolling high atop it, pacing slowly with her attention outward. The wall blocked out his sightline, tall as it was, but beyond its sturdy protection was the endless green woods, which by now would be shrouded in the deep silence and darkness of the coming evening. And beyond, miles beyond, was the Ward itself.

The Ward you could sort of see even from a distance, though. It acted like something of a filter against the light, Remus had once told him, like seeing the world through some dark, translucent fabric. It covered the whole of the land inside like a great dome, the dense magic making dark swirls sometimes, surging and gushing across the skies like some mythic beast. Even now, Harry watched a coil unfurl among the clouds to the east, vaguely like a hand relaxing its grip.

The immense barrier did nothing to stop the birds, though: grey-green augureys and blue-spotted knolls were growing more active as the twilight hour approached, swooping overhead in search of insects on the wind. The cleverest of them was Wink, a knoll who usually sidestepped the hassle of finding his own food in favor of mooching off the Ward's human residents when there was fish to be had. It didn't help that he had particularly beautiful feathers, glossy blue-violet speckled with black, which made him the spoiled favorite not-quite-pet of practically everyone in the Keep. Even now, Harry slipped him a sliver of fish, which he stabbed with his beak and gulped down greedily.

As the three of them worked, a few people wandered back in from the Keep's grounds, heading toward the great hall for dinner. Tiny Dedalus, covered in pale dust from repairing a crack in the stone wall, gave them a cheery smile and a wink as he passed. Bearing a basket of eggs from the duck pens, Clary passed with her young daughter Peony, who toddled up to peer into the bucket of fish before rejoining her mother.

Gideon and Fabian walked up just as the three of them were finishing. The Prewett twins were accompanied today by Benjy's Patronus, a silvery robin that had perched atop Fabian's shoulder. The twins carried between them something furry that turned out, to Harry's immense shock, to be an _actual red deer_. And not just any deer, either: it was a hulking creature, at least seven or eight years old. The twins slowed as they drew closer, identical fox-like grins on their pointed faces.

"Is that real?" Ginny exclaimed, starry-eyed. "Can I touch it?"

"Blimey, I can't say I didn't have the same reaction," Fabian laughed, watching his niece run a tentative hand over the deer's fur, the ridges of its antlers. "I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me when we saw it in the woods."

"I thought they were all gone. That we'd hunted them down, or things had eaten them." Neville said in awe.

"So we'd all thought," Gideon added. "Maybe it's a sign of good luck, then. Or at least I'll tell that to Molly after we scare the hell out of her."

Its antlers were a deep brown, the tines a polished white. "Dad'll be weirded out," Harry said, staring.

"Can't help that," Gideon replied cheerily, adjusting his bow as they all began moving toward the Keep door. "But at least he'll be well-fed."

As they strode toward the Keep, movement from above caught Harry's eye. The building towered above them, twenty stories in all, the stones in its western face a dusky grey. In the lower floors, Harry could already make out the faint glow of candlelight; in one of the windows, a pale face peered out and retreated back in. Alba, Neville's little sister, probably having caught sight of the Prewett twins' catch.

A rush of warmth washed over Harry as they stepped into the building. Candles glowed in the iron chandeliers above, flooding the room in golden light. As was typical at this time of the day, the great hall thrummed with conversation as everyone returned from their work. At a wooden table near the fireplace, Caradoc Dearborn and his son Benjy argued about something with Moody; the jeering grin on Mad-Eye's face suggested that he was winning. In the corner, Elpha McKinnon practiced on the wooden flute Hagrid had given her as a birthday gift a few days back. A small group had gathered, elbowing each other good-naturedly to request favorite tunes, but when the Prewetts walked in with the deer, their focus was quickly diverted. Benjy's robin Patronus grew miffed at the ensuing chaos and fluttered back to its caster.

Harry hefted the bucket of fish, moving aside. "We'll have to tell someone before we go," he said quietly to Neville and Ginny, watching the twins preen at the attention. "Else we'll never hear the end of it."

"It's not against the rules to be out there when it's light out, so long as we stay close. Except I guess it'll be dark soon." Neville added.

"But if we ask the right person, then it's fine."

"Not my parents, obviously," Ginny said grimly, tapping her nose.

"Or your dad, Harry," Neville added thoughtfully. "Who's hunting? Where are your Patronuses?"

"Mine's with Dad, and Ginny's is with Remus."

"Where's your mum, Neville?" Ginny asked. "She'd be alright with it, wouldn't she?"

Neville shrugged sheepishly. "She's in the woods too; I sent my Patronus out with her a couple hours ago."

"Great," Harry sighed. "So that leaves Mum, and she'll give us a fair chance. Let's go run the fish back, then."

A door to the left of the fireplace led to the kitchens, and Harry made a beeline for it. The clank of pots and pans grew louder as they stepped over the threshold; a fire roiled in the corner, and the space smelled deliciously of onions and celery root. As always, the space buzzed with work, Ginny's mum at the center of it all.

Very few people in the Keep worked in the same place consistently; it was much more typical to specialize in a few things and rotate between them, according to a schedule Elphias carefully maintained in keeping with the needs of the season and, of course, the strengths of the person. Harry's father, for example, spent his days alternating between hunting with a team in the woods and helping with the harvest. His mother mostly turned their meager supplies into useful potions, but she occasionally worked to dry their extra food for winter or took turns watching on the wall.

Molly Weasley, on the other hand, was in charge of the food, and it was her only job. No one else could manage the stores of the entire Keep like she could, or keep plates filled even when the harvest was lean. Molly ferociously pushed them to preserve food now, in the heat of summer, and made sure they had enough rations in the thin winters, wielded a knife more skillfully than even Sirius, had arms sturdy enough to pack a solid punch from pummeling bread dough all day.

Her recruits today were the usual. Augusta Longbottom shelled wild peas near the window, bony fingers working with expert ease; Marlene McKinnon shaped fresh dough on a wooden table in the back; Harry was surprised to see his mum there as well, chattering amiably at Marlene's side as she helped roll the bread.

"There you are, dears, and quicker than I thought," Molly said, motioning for them to bring the fish forward. Harry set the bucket on the table, and she began to pull them out. "Good catch today," she said approvingly.

"Wait until you see what's coming next," Ginny grinned. "You'll just about die."

"What's coming next?" Molly asked curiously. She had reached up to the mantel wall above the fire to tap one of the runes carved there, and the fire's strength dwindled as it obediently curled in on itself like a closing flower. "Oh, and you've brought the mushrooms—lovely."

"You'll see soon enough. Did you need some help with them?"

"Well, they'll go well in the stew, but they'll need to be cleaned and sliced…" An enormous pot of something woody and sweet-smelling simmered in the hearth—hunter's stew, most likely. Ginny drew Molly's attention toward it ("Oh, what did you add to it today? Is the dried garlic ready yet?") as she snuck Harry a pointed look.

Neville followed Harry toward the wooden work tables, slipping away to talk with his grandmother. Harry set his sights on his mother instead. "Hello, mum," he said as he approached.

"Harry. What are you up to?" The corners of Lily's eyes crinkled when she smiled. A smattering of freckles, earned from long days in sunlight, stretched across her cheeks.

"Well." Harry said wryly. "Since you've asked..."

"Oh, no."

"It's nothing bad," he promised, returning the smile. "We just want to go back into the woods, Ginny and Neville and me."

"Why do you want to go into the woods, then?" Marlene, probably his mother's best friend in the whole Keep, had a glinting grin, dark hair to her shoulders, and a funny way of knowing when she was being lied to.

 _Careful,_ Harry warned himself, hoping the pair of them wouldn't gang up to tell him _no_. "Well...Ginny thought she saw something."

"What? Some sort of creature?"

"No, weirder. A woman."

Marlene and Lily exchanged a glance. "So it was a magical creature, then. Something that can shapeshift," Marlene said.

"No, Ginny said—" Harry tossed a look over his shoulder, feeling stupid and half-wishing Ginny would come to his rescue. "Well, she said it was a stranger."

"There are no strangers here," Lily said resolutely. "Not anymore. It was a hidebehind."

"That's what _I_ said—"

"—which the lot of you are capable of dealing with, as long as we _know_ that's what it is," Lily continued. "And I don't think we know that for sure."

"There would be three of us, though. And Ginny's got defensive magic, she's probably the safest person to go with in the whole Keep." At last, Lily sighed, but she looked conflicted now, which Harry thought was a step in the right direction. "Come on, mum, it's like you said. Remus taught us well. We've been allowed into the woods nearby for practically two years now. And it won't be far; Ginny's not allowed more than a mile out for gathering. There's nothing serious this close to the wall. It's got to be a hidebehind or a kelpie. Or a really attractive dementor."

Lily frowned, but it was the crooked one she had when she was thinking and not the one she wore when she was angry. "It's getting late. It'll be dark soon."

"But it isn't now. If we leave right away, we can check it out and be done before dark."

"Good to take care of it anyway," Augusta added sternly, abandoning all pretense of working with the beans. Neville gave Harry an apologetic look, probably because he hadn't managed to distract her for long, but Harry couldn't have held it against him. "It's best to keep the woods round the wall clear, right?"

"I notice Ginny and Neville aren't begging _their_ mothers," Marlene said, amused.

"Course not. They're not _mad_." Augusta replied, giving Neville an uncharacteristic (if straight-faced) wink, and Harry rallied a bit to know she was on their side.

"I don't know, Harry," Lily said. "Why don't you all just go out tomorrow in the day…"

But Harry, who had just glanced back toward Ginny and got an idea, quickly asked, "What if we got someone to come with us? Like a proper hunter, who's trained to go out more than a couple miles and everything?"

"And which hunter would that be?"

"Oi! Sirius!" Harry called. A few feet away, his godfather had been sneaking a roll, fresh from the stone oven. Happily, Molly was still distracted by the deer, and Sirius was able to quickly stuff it into his pocket as he strode across the room.

"Dirty trick, Hal," Sirius said, mock glowering at his godson's smug grin.

"Sirius, you're a proper hunter, right? I hear you can even manage a sword."

"That I can, Hal," Sirius replied suspiciously, looking at Lily for guidance. Lily and Marlene just watched in amusement.

"And wasn't it you who just last month, one thousand miles away and all alone, took down a boggart that had taken the shape of a giant flesh-eating spider?"

"I was with Remus," Sirius challenged, laughing. "And we've barely got a full hundred miles to roam in the Ward."

"But basically, yes—"

"And I think it was a normal acromantula, not the flesh-eating kind...or I suppose all giant spiders can eat flesh if they want. Oh, and it was just a spider, not a boggart, though—"

"Sirius, help me out here."

"You just tried to bring the wrath of Molly Weasley down on me!" Sirius laughed incredulously.

"Which I now feel really, really badly about and _anyway,_ since you obviously have nothing better to do until dinner besides nick extra food, how would you feel about leading a four-person expedition out into the perimeter of the woods, starting right now?"

"Knowing you, I'd rather take latrine duty for a week," he fired back. Then: "How far is 'the perimeter?'" he asked suspiciously.

"No more than a mile. Ginny was out gathering when she saw something weird we want to check out. She said it looked like a strange woman."

"Hmm. Probably a hidebehind."

"That's what _I_ said," Harry and his mother repeated in unison.

"Great. Sounds fascinating," Sirius replied. After a moment, he slowly got to his feet, cramming half the dinner roll into his mouth. "'pose I'm in. We goin' now or wha'?"

Lily gave Sirius a _look,_ but Sirius returned it soberly. "You know I'll watch them," he said after swallowing the mouthful. "If it's anything we can't handle, we'll come straight back. But it's not much different from anything else they do in the woods, Lils, if a bit later in the day. We won't go any further than the sound of my horn can carry." Like the rest of them, Sirius had removed his weapons and outer gear when he entered the stone Keep, the only safe place in all the land. Even so, as his hand fell to his hip as he spoke, as if he hadn't quite remembered the horn's absence in time.

"Alright, then," she said at last, appeased. "It looked like rain earlier, so make sure you've got your cloak," Lily said, more to Sirius than to Harry, who was already wearing his from earlier. "And Harry, take my blade, not your spear."

"Sure, mum. I'll grab it on the way out."

"See to it you do," Lily replied, surprising Harry by giving them a smile as they set off. "And whatever it is...take it out."

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As it was wont to do, the weather had turned in the span of only a half hour. The augureys perched in the Keep's upper windows had been crying as the four of them left the building, though, so they had dutifully brought their warmer gear. Now, a fine mist, churned by the incessant breeze and gleaming in the filtered light of the setting sun, fell about them as Ginny led the way. In their dark lethifold-skin cloaks, made waterproof with the aid of Neville's runes, they probably looked something like dementors themselves. All the same, the sturdy fabric repelled the worst of the chill and the wet, and the hood meant that Harry's face stayed mostly dry.

Which was good, because Harry kept finding his eyes drawn to the hunting horn at Sirius's side as they walked. It was the length of his forearm, dark and red as blood. Along with its identical siblings worn by the other hunters, it had come, or so Harry had been told, from a graphorn that had been killed in the first days of the Ward.

Harry had seen a lot of things in the woods, a lot of things that unsettled him. Dementors and lethifolds, of course, but also prowling erklings and red caps. There were kelpies and pogrebin, and, twice, wyrms that had strayed too near the Keep. And that was without mentioning all the plants that wanted to kill you as well, but Harry didn't really like to dwell on those. He knew as well that there were worse things out there still, roaming somewhere in the black heart of the Ward, out beyond the small patch of woods nearest the Keep where he was allowed to roam. He'd heard stories from his father and mother and the others, stories that usually kept him content with the meager swath of land he knew by heart—if curious about the rest of it.

He had never seen a graphorn. Back when even the adults had been younger, back when the land was new, there had been more things like graphorns, giant beasts that had taken almost all of the adults to kill. Bigger, stronger, faster things, things that still existed now but in fewer numbers, cut down by blades and arrows and, at least in these days, spells. Not just hidebehinds and kelpies and dementors, but _real_ monsters from his parents' stories.

Sometimes, Harry wondered what it must have been like back then, every day facing creatures he could name but had never seen.

"How far _can_ the horns be heard, anyway?" he wondered curiously. Sirius gave no sign he was surprised by the sudden question.

"We've never really tested it," his godfather replied. Though Sirius was looking away as he walked, scanning the woods, the easy tone of his voice suggested a grin. "Never had to. People just always hear. Doesn't really matter though—if we don't find anything nearby, we'll just turn round."

"Are we close now?" Neville asked, slipping a bit in the mud. Harry threw out a hand to steady him, used to his friend's occasional clumsiness.

"Not much farther," Ginny replied distractedly. "Few minutes or so. Maybe a quarter-mile from Augurey Sound."

They were all alert now, listening hard for any scrap of sound in the wood. The wind blustered past them, now rising and now falling, tugging at the dark boughs of the trees. Harry felt the comforting weight of his mother's shortsword against his back, though he'd have preferred the familiarity of his own spear. At his side, Neville was looking upward past the leaves and into the evening sky, which was a bruised purple toward the horizon. Harry followed his gaze to find that floating near the dark clouds to the east was a pair of dementors, their cloaks whipping in the wind.

"You see them?" Sirius said approvingly. "Good. Looks like they're just trailing behind us, but it's best to be aware."

"Constant vigilance," Ginny replied distractedly.

"There's that," Sirius agreed. After a moment's pause, he added slyly: "I think they'll leave us alone after the solstice next week, though."

Neville and Harry shared a confused glance. Ginny voiced their question. "What do you mean?"

"Let's just say Gideon and Fabian have a special celebration planned," Sirius replied with a grin.

"What kind of celebration?" Neville asked.

"Will they make fireworks again?" Harry added excitedly. "They _will_ , won't they?"

"It's no fun to _tell_ you outright...so I won't."

"But you've already mostly told us!"

"Shhh. You've heard nothing from me!" Sirius laughed, and before they could wheedle an answer from him, he shifted and a great black dog surged forward in his place.

"Ugh, you're such a nuisance," Harry said. Sirius, of course, did not reply, but he did circle around to leave a trail of slobber across the back of Harry's hand. In Animagus form, Padfoot's keen sensorium made him naturally better at recognizing the things that stalked them in the night, dementors and lethifolds and such, and so Harry suspected his godfather would eventually have turned into Padfoot regardless of the subject of conversation.

The woods were peaceful as they continued on. The sound of crickets chirping joined the hum of the wind. Ginny led them steadily forward, her hair bright in the darkness.

It was several minutes later that Harry noticed Sirius stiffen at his side. The dog made a gruff sound, but almost at the same time, Ginny said in a hushed voice: "Look, it's still there!"

In the growing darkness, Harry couldn't make out what she meant; nothing moved in the coming night except for branches and groundcover in the breeze. But Ginny had already begun to move forward, slinking toward a copse of trees a few yards beyond them.

The others swept forward to flank her, with Sirius now at the front. As they approached the trees, Harry realized there _was_ something there, a dark thing leaning bonelessly against a fallen log. It was about the size of a human, not tall and silvery like a hidebehind, nor was it probably a kelpie, because as they grew near, he realized its skin was distinctly human-like. In fact, _all_ of it was distinctly human-like.

"A boggart?" Harry murmured out of the corner of his mouth.

"Wouldn't it have done something by now?" Neville asked. They were just a few feet away, and had all drawn their weapons, Harry with his shortsword, Neville with his spear, and Ginny nocking an arrow.

The thing moved very slowly, like someone coming out of a dream, and Harry realized that the dark part of it was hair—three or four feet of tangled, knotted black hair. It was a _person,_ a woman, just as Ginny had said. She was lying face down, but as she rolled her head to see them, the hair slid out of her face. Her skin was marred with a combination of dirt and bruises that made it hard to make out any distinguishing features except maybe a strong jaw. And then—

"You're hurt," Harry said stupidly, for she was: crusts of dried black blood had stained the filthy grey dress she wore.

"I've just finished bleeding," the person-thing rasped, and this, more than anything he had ever heard, made ice creep over his skin. Harry didn't need to look at the others to know that they were just as dumbfounded as he was, blindsided by a creature that used _words_. There were markedly few of those, and all of them lethal. But then...

"Are you a _human_?" Ginny asked it.

"Are you an idiot?" The person croaked. Though it was obvious the woman barely had the strength to move, her dark eyes darted between all of them, until they came to rest on Harry. She frowned, studying him.

Padfoot was taut as a bowstring, ears up and tail straight. He growled.

"How are you—what are you doing here?" Neville asked.

The person closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the damp log. "Mordred's crown, I'll have another go with the bloody manticore over a band of teenage imbeciles."

After a long moment, in which all of them stared blankly at her and probably gave her no confidence that they _weren't_ imbeciles, Padfoot came to their rescue and changed back into a human.

The woman watched this transformation disinterestedly until the very end. Once Sirius's face was clear, she choked on something which turned out eventually to be a laugh, though she clutched at her ribs as though they pained her. "Cousin," she wheezed at last. "I'd really hoped you were dead."

"Bellatrix," Sirius replied. He drew his sword and reached down quickly to pick up an oddly straight twig that lay at her side. Whatever it was must have been important, for the woman blinked herself out of her daze just in time to reach weakly for it. "I can honestly say the same."

Before the woman, Bellatrix, could say more, Sirius put the twig in his coat pocket. "Harry," he murmured, not taking his eyes off the woman. "I need some rope."

It took Harry a moment to drag his thoughts from the stranger and understand what Sirius meant, but when the words finally filtered into his mind, he looked around quickly to spot a large, fallen branch a few feet away. He walked over, bent down, and focused on what he needed. Ropes he had made a hundred times before, maybe a thousand, but as always, each act of transfiguration was unique. He imagined the hard bark and layered wood filtering into a million twisted fibers, joined in flexibility, still with an implacable strength. When at last he was ready, he performed the spell— _chordarius_ —with just as much care as every other time, taking the few moments he needed to perfect it.

When he had finished, and felt the last of the spell's magic go out of him, he held a long length of rope which he handed wordlessly to his godfather. Sirius took it, sheathed his sword, and glanced at Ginny, who nodded curtly—meaning, Harry thought, that she was ready to defend them by bow or by spell if it came down to it. Sirius knelt down. He pulled the woman forward, looping it around her wrists and knotting the length tightly.

"What in _Merlin's_ name..." Bellatrix protested weakly, though she had no strength to fight him off.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked uncertainly, though he did nothing to stop it. "She's hurt—we can't just—"

"Harry," Sirius said. His voice was quiet, but something in it made Harry close his mouth straight away. "You may not understand...and I can't explain it now, so I can't expect you to. But she might be the most dangerous thing we have in the Ward right now."

"Oh ho," Bellatrix said weakly, head lolling backward. Her eyes were half-lidded now. "That's quite...quite a compliment, cousin."

"Sirius, I don't understand." Ginny said, still staring down her bow at the woman. "Where did she come from? Where did she—it's... _there are no strangers._ It's just us. Isn't it?"

Sirius opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked dazed himself. "I don't even know how to tell you. Don't ask me questions."

"Did she just call you _cousin?_ " Neville realized suddenly. Once it was pointed out, Harry felt he could almost see it: the cutting jawline, the high cheekbones, dark hair and eyes.

Bellatrix gave a tired grin, and there was something cruel in it, something very unlike Sirius's usual grins. "Who are...these babies?" she asked, though her voice was thin and pained. "And how have they survived...so long?"

Sirius stood, ignoring her question. "I'm bringing you back to the Keep, but there's a few things you'll need to know," Sirius told her conversationally. "Things are different from how they used to be. _I_ can't stun you, and Ginny's never had to stun a human before, and I don't think now's the best time for her to practice on _you_. So you can either shut up, or I can knock you out with the blunt end of this." He pulled his sword partway from its sheath and then slid it back in. "I'm not great at gauging my own strength or where to strike, so I might hit you too hard and kill you. I'm also not good at making sure I'm hitting with the blunt end, so I might give you the sharp side and kill you." And there it was: a cruel smile not unlike the one that had just been on the stranger's face.

Bellatrix said nothing, just frowned tiredly up at him. "What—?"

Before she could continue, he hoisted her bodily over one shoulder, and her head fell with an _oof_ against his back. Sirius stood, turning to face them. He must have somehow known the questions on their tongues, because he took a long moment to school his face into stone. "Don't ask me just now," he ordered. "Don't...I can't answer. When we get back..."

He didn't seem to know exactly how to finish. And so without another word, he set off the way they had come, tracing their path back toward the Keep. After only the smallest hesitation, Harry and his friends slipped into line behind him, following his footsteps in the darkness.

It was colder now, though the mist had long since stopped falling. As they walked, their steps rang loud in the wood. Harry stared at his godfather's back, stared at the woman who could not exist, because this, the Ward, was all there was.

 _But there are no strangers,_ he thought.

.

.

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 **A/N:** Poor kid has been fed some _serious lies_. Man, what a thing to have happen to you in the middle of your summer vacay.

Anyway. This story has been floating around in my head for a while. I was wondering what it would look like if things had gone differently and the first Order of the Phoenix survived (and how that might happen in the first place). Plus, I love medieval-inspired settings, so the walled Keep in the woods practically invented itself.

So here's the result, though I won't do too much talking about how things came to be this way for Harry and the others. Maybe you can guess. But either way, answers are coming in the next part! (Uhhh probably. I haven't written it just yet, though the general story outline is already done.) Don't hesitate to ask questions, though—I do want to be sure I've covered everything without leaving plot holes, so if you're curious about something, let me know. I just might not be able to answer some things!

 **Couple notes:**

1\. In case it isn't clear, everyone says "the Ward" to refer both to the magical dome and the actual land within it, including but not limited to the hills, woods, and castle Keep. More description of all that stuff to come. Eventually.

2\. The prophecy does not include the lines about Harry being marked by Voldemort, because it makes my life easier.

3\. Unfortunately, updates are going to be pretty sporadic. But things are all outlined now, so hopefully I'll have the next one out soon :)

If you got this far, let me know what you thought!

Peace,

~ket


	2. What Harry Knew

.

 **The Ward**

 **Part Two**

.

 _What Harry Knew_

.

Rarely was it quiet in the great hall of the Keep in the evenings. Just over fifty people lived in the Keep, the only sound structure within the Ward, and though they barely filled a quarter of the Keep's rooms, there were enough of them to crowd the hall itself. Unlike breakfast and lunch, which were light meals taken quickly or eaten on the go, dinner was a long affair in the Keep, and one of the best parts of the day, in Harry's opinion.

The fabric of the evenings was patterned by the residents' habits: when they weren't on duty or discussing it, Dedalus and Elphias exchanged clever riddles and jokes in the corner, Elpha played requests on her flute or old harp, and Sturgis worked on his map of the Ward. Caradoc taught Harry and the others to throw knives into the board he'd set against the far wall, and Hagrid whittled miniature monsters from leftover timber. Harry's parents cleaned their weapons or joked around with Sirius and Remus, and they often let themselves be drawn into stories about the Ward, or about the creatures of the first days.

At present, if only for a moment, the entire hall was both crowded and silent, all eyes having fallen onto the now unconscious woman that Sirius set down on the table.

And then everything exploded into sound and movement all at once.

"Bloody hell," Moody was growling, "is that who I think it is?"

"They weren't supposed to come here. _No one_ was supposed to come here—"

Emmeline's arms were folded over her stomach, as though warding off nausea. Or a headache. "We're dead to them, remember? They have no reason—"

"That's what I thought too until a minute ago!" Sturgis protested. He ran a hand anxiously through straw-colored hair.

"What does that mean, if they've found us?"

"They haven't _found_ us, because they never _lost_ us—"

"Sirius, what has Lestrange said, has she said anything?"

But Sirius could hardly get a word in edgewise over the clamor.

"I don't understand," Harry said quietly. At his side, Ginny was shaking her head.

"It means there are people outside the Ward," Neville replied, his words coming slowly as if they had only just settled into his mind. "It means...maybe when everyone first left to come here, some people they left behind are still alive."

"At least one of them," Harry agreed, staring.

He could not remember ever seeing them all like this, everyone so fraught with anger and worry that they could hardly let each other speak. Well, he amended, maybe at times when there was some obvious threat. But the woman, Bellatrix, lay stone still on the table, as if dead.

"Who is she really?" he asked.

No one answered.

"Nev, what's happened?" Alba, at nine, looked awfully small amidst the shouting adults. She sidled up next to her brother, bouncing anxiously on thin, coltish legs.

"It'll be alright," Neville replied, wincing as someone who sounded like Moody shouted fiercely that they'd have to learn what Bellatrix knew and then dump her body somewhere. "They're just talking," he added.

"For Merlin's sake, let's wake her up, then," Remus shouted. It was unusual for the werewolf to raise his voice for any reason, and that's why, Harry thought, so many people paused to listen. Remus's amber eyes flashed in the firelight. "You're forgetting that we're meant to be the adults here," he added in the relative quiet that followed, jerking his head toward Harry and the others. As one, the room looked in their direction, read the uncertainty in their faces.

Molly pushed through the crowd, having gone to fetch a bucket of water from the kitchen. "You lot should go upstairs," she said to them, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Still, Ginny and Harry both opened their mouths to say something before Arthur interrupted. "Maybe just Alba and the little ones," he said apologetically before turning back to his wife. "As for the rest...we might as well. They'll know now anyway, and I think it's time."

After a moment, Molly nodded. Alba made a face but knew better than to protest. Emmeline drew the short straw and took her and Benjy and the toddlers upstairs. Once they had all gone, Molly heaved the bucket up to her chest. "Alright, then," she said, and splashed it across the unconscious woman's face.

Bellatrix sputtered and coughed, again clutching her ribs where the blood had dried into her dress. As the woman drunkenly rubbed at her head and got her bearings, the room seemed to become aware of whatever danger she presented. Alice placed herself in front of Neville, and as Harry crept over to the table where his parents stood, he noted many hands falling to rest on weapons. James and Lily said nothing to him as he came to stand between them, but James gave him a wry kind of grimace and draped an arm across his shoulders.

At last, Bellatrix propped herself up on her elbows as best she could, finally seeing the dense ring of faces before her. For the first time, Harry saw something like fear in her gaze. "Hecate's tits," she rasped quietly, though the words carried in the silent room. Then: "All of you fuckers are still alive?"

"Not all," Alice said, her eyes cold. Beside her, Neville stared. "And no thanks to you and yours."

Harry turned to his mother, shaking his head and letting the confusion show in his shook her head and squeezed his arm. "Not now," she whispered. "We'll explain. Just...later."

"In my defence," Bellatrix said, recovering quickly from the shock to school her face into what Harry was quickly coming to recognize as her resting expression of haughty amusement, "we hardly thought the suffering would take so long. Even the Dark Lord expected you'd all be dead within the week. And here we are, decades later…" She grinned, and her teeth were stained brown with her blood.

"Glad to have proven him wrong," Moody said gruffly. There were rumblings of agreement from the room at large.

"And without your bloody wands to boot. And your magic's been bound, anyway," Bellatrix continued, lazing backward a bit. "How the fuck did you manage? There must have been a hundred damn creatures in here, not to mention the bloodthirsty plants. I think even a quintaped or two. And I got a graphorn in here myself."

Sirius said nothing, but his hand fell once again to the hollow horn that lay at his waist. Bellatrix's eyes fell upon it, and then flitted to the handful of other bright horns adorning belts around the room, hanging on the hooks at the door or lying beside weapons on the tables.

"Bloody hell," she said at last. "You killed the thing. And you've even raised chickies here, I see."

For a moment, Harry had no idea what she meant, except he realized she was staring straight at him again.

Harry's father didn't move, but he spoke in such a dark tone that Harry could only imagine his expression. "Lestrange, why have you come here after all this time?"

The mirth fell from Bellatrix's face. She looked suddenly tired. "The Dark Lord and I have gone our separate ways," she said at last, something wry in her tone.

Harry was still trying to make heads or tails of the conversation—who on earth was the Dark Lord they kept mentioning?—as Sirius gave a bark of laughter. "Do you really expect us to believe that? You're Voldemort's _closest_ follower. What could you possibly have done—"

"I betrayed him."

More disbelieving sounds. Harry looked about to see his mother's scowl. Sturgis and Elphias exchanged mistrustful looks, eyebrows raised.

"A lot's changed in fifteen years," Bellatrix said. "I can't expect you to understand, but things are different now. _He's_ different now."

"Oh, poor you," Sirius replied.

"You _asked_ me about—"

"Sirius," Remus snapped, and Sirius at least had the sense to sit back in his seat, though his glare was no less fierce. The werewolf turned back to Bellatrix. "What did you do? What's happened?"

"What I did was, I'd planned to smuggle myself out of Europe. Me, Narcissa, her family. It's a capital crime nowadays, if you hadn't heard, to even look like you disagree with Dark Lord over what to eat for breakfast. As for the last decade and a half...well, quite a lot's happened but I think I can safely say the most important thing is the power's got to his bloody head. And...it was all well and good at first. Things were as they always _should_ have been. Purebloods were at the top, as we were meant to be. Our magic was bloody _strong._ And mudbloods and blood traitors, they groveled at our feet. Muggles were taken for amusement, and we…" her expression grew cruel. She was grinning again, that same awful grin. "Well. First just in England, then in the north, then across Wizarding Europe. He had it all. _We_ had it all. Even the Muggles knew us then, they knew what we were and who we were, but there was nothing they could do but shit themselves and hide. There was no one left to stop us, because we'd killed anyone who tried, or put the worst of them _here._ "

Her face took on a pensive look, ignoring the scattered oaths that filled the room, some under the breath and some half-shouted. "Honestly, I expect the only reason you lot've never been meddled with _here_ is because he doesn't need this place anymore...he doesn't pretend be some benevolent ruler anymore, as if he'll exile people to certain death to keep the blood off his hands.

"No. To him, it's a waste if he can't watch them go, screaming themselves hoarse to the last. He wants to see the suffering now. This place means nothing to him anymore." She scrabbled up a bit more on her elbows for a better viewpoint. "Suppose you ought to be thanking him for changing his mind, then? Otherwise you'd've had loads more company, and maybe not the kinds of company you'd like."

Harry had to admire, if nothing else, the woman's complete lack of self-preservation. She was either too indifferent or too out of it to notice the tightening of fists and jaws across the room. Or maybe, given her apparent history with everyone here, she knew as well as Harry did that no serious harm would befall her here. _Or at least I would have said that an hour ago,_ Harry amended. _But I also didn't know a lot of stuff an hour ago, apparently._

"What changed, then?" Remus asked loudly, over several growled profanities and unfinished questions. "Why have you come?"

"He's gone mad now," Bellatrix continued at last. "I don't know where it started, maybe when he started encouraging us to turn each other in for stupid shit, even for maybe fucking up the pureblood lines by not using magic as he thinks we ought. He'll kill you for blinking at him wrong, no matter the sacrifices you've made for him. And he'll enjoy it, the way he's got everyone on eggshells...Yeah, fuck, I don't know if you've noticed, but he stopped using this place as a dumping ground for beasts a while ago. Used to be the garbage dump for magical filth, but now he keeps whatever beasts he finds locked up and close at hand in case he wants a messy and creative execution."

The crowd sobered at this. Bellatrix stared at them flatly. "So. I'm done. There's nowhere in Europe that's safe. Not since he let the Muggles find out about us. And the Americas cut off all contact with us ages ago, but if there's somewhere out there to lie low, I'll find it. Been at this game too bloody long to go out like some stupid bitch under his wand."

The room was again silent, but this time it was a considering one. Harry, still barely following, turned to his mother, giving her a hard look, but Lily shook her head again.

"And so he found that you betrayed him. And he sent you here," Moody said. "Obviously."

"Obviously," Bellatrix echoed without any shred of irony. "But it was more than that. I knew the execution was coming; I'd been caught—it was bloody Rodolphus who turned me in—"

"That's rich," Sirius muttered under his breath.

"For fuck's sake," Bellatrix spat at him. She calmed herself. "Cissy, at least, I kept out of it. He never knew she was planning to go, too. So the only thing left was for the Dark Lord to kill me. I learned some Occlumency a while back, thanks to your dear Severus—" another wild grin "—but the trick was more that I needed to push an idea into _his_ head. With magic, I can't. Not skilled enough to best him. With words, I thought I could. I've been dropping hints for ages to his stupider goons, reminding them that this place even existed, that Merlin forbid they put me _here_ —and I'm sure they brought it straight to him like the fucking lapdogs they are. He must have thought it over and realized what a fitting punishment it would be—"

"It was _your idea_ to come here?" This was Arthur, aghast.

"Why in Merlin's name would you _want_ to be here?" Elphias added after a beat of silence. "Especially if you thought everyone else you'd sent here had all died?"

"Hm. There's a question." Bellatrix had finally managed to sit up proper, though she leaned to one side as if balance was a bit too difficult at the moment. "And you're right, I wasn't expecting the _honor_ of your company. But as for why...well. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I'm very good at stable spellwork." Bellatrix was grinning again. "Top of my class in Ancient Runes, way back when Hogwarts taught something that wasn't dark and...bloody. I helped _make_ this place, and all the protections around it back when the war was raging still. I helped with the main ward, at the very least. _Muralis obscura_ was the framework for all of the runes, the basic incantation. It was _me_."

Alice was shaking her head. "What does that have to do with anything?" she asked slowly. "So then you know you're trapped here, with all the trash Voldemort has cast 's no way to get beyond the Ward."

"I don't know that at all," Bellatrix replied flippantly.

Harry knew he wasn't the only one staring openly. "Say what you mean," Moody growled.

"I'm lazy as _fuck_ ," Bellatrix crowed, throwing her head back in laughter. This got her too off-balance, and she fell back on her elbows against the table again. "I wasn't going to pull the ward _up_ and _down_ every bloody time I came to work on it. Do you know how fucking _exhausting_ that is? It's a massive bit of work, both magically and physically, if you get me. Stretches on for miles, wickedly complicated rune work. No, it would take ages. And so...I made a back door to let myself in and out as I worked."

There was a pregnant pause. Alice shook her head again, but her eyes had grown round. Even from where he stood, Harry could see the bright hazel of them. "That's not possible. We've swept every inch of the Ward, the entire circle. Miles around. There's nothing. We don't have magic, not anymore, but rune work is basic. One of us would have seen a flaw."

"There's something," Bellatrix fired back, though she looked more tired now, as though all the talking had finally rung her dry. "But you wouldn't have known it. I couldn't chance anyone else seeing the weak point as I worked—I've a reputation to uphold, after all—and I especially couldn't chance any naughty convicts escaping," she winked. "I protected my own back, as I always have. Fidelius Charm."

"That means…" Sturgis began.

"That means there's a way out. And _I_ know how to find it."

A few heartbeats more of silence. Whatever Harry couldn't understand from their conversation, he could certainly understand this. Or—well, it couldn't possibly mean what he thought it meant. He glanced toward Ginny, standing behind her parents, her mouth agape.

"Bullshit." It was Caradoc who spoke now. His voice was sullen. "That's awfully convenient."

"I'll say," Hagrid grumbled from somewhere behind.

"It _is_ convenient for me not to die at your hands from some act of vengeance. _But..._ it's also convenient for me to get out of this bloody place." Bellatrix's attention had begun to flag, her eyes slightly out of focus, and she rested her head back against the table. "This is _not_ the way I plan to go out."

She lay there motionless, maybe fighting off sleep or unconsciousness, though she turned her head to stare. For some time, no one spoke. "I think we should still kill her," Moody said after a moment, though Harry thought he didn't really mean it anymore.

"We aren't killing her," Alice replied slowly. "Not yet. Not tonight."

"We don't know that this isn't a trap," Remus cautioned. "She could be telling us what we want to hear. But at the same time…"

Interruptions began to pick up, and the hall erupted into clamor once more.

"If it's real…"

"Bloody hell. Bloody _hell_."

"I don't believe it…"

"I thought we were finished. I thought we were finished with all of this." The last was Lily, quiet, speaking only to James, and maybe to Harry as well. "I thought we were safe here."

"Me too," James said, stretching his arm behind Harry's shoulders to rub her back. His face looked frozen, his eyes glued to Bellatrix's unmoving form. Bellatrix's eyes were closed now, but there was something like amusement in the curve of her mouth. "No. No, we'll be alright."

Harry felt somehow worn out, like clothes washed and left on the line for too long. There was so much he hadn't understood, so much beyond him, and yet the gist of what he _had_ caught was so absurd that it may as well have been a fairytale. A fairytale that everyone, everyone in the whole Keep, even his parents, seemed to have believed as truth for a very long time.

"Great," Harry said, giving both of them a moment to stare bleakly into the arguing crowd. "Now that that's sorted, maybe you can explain to me what the hell just happened."

Lily didn't even pretend to scold him for the language. She just turned away from the spectacle to run a shaky hand through her hair and send grimace at James. Then, for a moment, she searched the room until her eyes caught on something; Harry turned to see Molly facing their way. Something unspoken passed between the two of them, and then Lily stood. "James, get him upstairs. Best to talk to each of them individually, I think, instead of muddling everything up between all of us. Give me a few minutes to make sure they don't actually kill her, and I'll be right up."

James rose obediently, tugging Harry's cloak. "Come on, then." They left the great hall and turned toward the twisting staircase that wound its way to the very top of the Keep some twenty stories overhead. Harry took the stairs two at a time behind his father. James swore softly under his breath.

"You know, I..." he paused on the second floor landing, hands on his hips. "I never thought we'd be having this conversation. I used to, but it's been so long…" he laughed. "I thought we'd all grow old here, just as things are, without ever…"

Harry watched him rub the back of his neck. It was so odd to see nerves, or anxiety, or whatever it was from his father of all people that Harry felt very out of place. "Why didn't you tell me before?" he blurted.

James blew out a long sigh, resuming the trek upstairs. "It's...complicated. It isn't that we thought you couldn't take it, it's just that—we thought there was no point. There was no way out of the Ward—"

"You told me you went _into_ the Ward to get away from stuff."

"I know, I know," James replied. Even from behind, Harry could almost sense his father's frown. "It was just...easier."

"Easier."

"Don't say it like that. Bloody hell. Why Lily sent _me_ first to talk to you…she'll be better at this."

They had reached the fourth floor. Like all the other floors but the ground floor, it was composed of one long hallway with a series of identical rooms on each side, all of them in the grey stone that ran throughout the rest of the Keep. As James led the way to his and Lily's room, he looked so miserable that Harry couldn't help but add, "I'm not upset. Or—not yet. I don't get it, what happened, but I'm just...confused. Right now."

"You and me both," James muttered, but he clapped Harry on the back and strode inside. Hesitating for only a moment, Harry followed.

.

Beyond the Ward was nothing at all.

That had been the gist of things, as far as Harry had understood. There was nothing for them out there. There was nothing that mattered at all except the hundred or so square miles of rolling hills and forest within the Ward itself, and the Keep at its very heart.

What Harry knew was this: once upon a time, the Ward had been empty. His parents and everyone else Harry knew had lived elsewhere, out in the world beyond. There had been a magical land there once, called London, or England—Harry couldn't keep them straight. And there had been millions of witches and wizards together, and other human-like magical beings as well.

Millions and millions. In the summers here in the Ward, when the dragonflies molted and were on the wing, Harry thought of that sometimes. Here and there amid the green thickets hundreds of the insects buzzed in the mid-afternoon air. To have so many humans, or more, really—Harry couldn't picture more than the few dozen people he knew in the Keep.

It didn't seem to matter that he couldn't picture it, not back then. After all, those people were dead.

Back when his parents were younger, the people of the wizarding world had lived in relative peace. Not a monster to be seen, James had once told him—and they wouldn't have known what to do if they _had_ faced one back then, even with their magic. It had happened slowly, but soon, in England, there were creatures worse than what roamed here in the woods, fierce beasts that required at least a hundred men to kill. There had been too many of them, too many people dying, and that's why James and Lily and anyone else smart enough had left when they could. Between them, they found this safe place, behind the Ward, where the monsters were just enough to deal with. Where life was possible again.

Beyond the Ward was only chaos and death. Except that wasn't true, was it?

Had it ever been?

The truth was different, but somehow more real. More solid. Now that Harry heard it, he could recognize the rest of his life before as the fairy tale, the story that was too neatly packaged to be real.

The truth was this: his parents had not come here of their own free will. They'd been exiled here. A man had taken control of London, bound their magic, and thrown them here. The world that lay beyond the Ward still existed, and though it might be chaos and death still, there was much more to the story than Harry had ever known.

"I don't understand," Harry said slowly, frowning down at his hands. He sat on the bed in his parents' room. A lighted series of candles lay along the dresser and windowsill. Over the years, Caradoc and Hagrid had teamed up to make tiny cast-iron balconies for those who wanted them, usually for special occasions like birthdays or Christmas. Harry's mother had gotten one ages ago, separated from the room by a glass door reinforced by Neville's runes. Adorned with a little wooden chair for reading, it was one of Lily's favorite places to be. At present, she leaned against the jamb in the doorway, as though seeking that comfort still, and frowned out into the night.

Ever energetic, James paced back and forth before their wooden desk, occasionally glancing at its contents: a few hunting knives of various lengths that he'd probably been in the midst of sharpening. Harry thought his father's fingers probably itched to _do_ something—which was a sentiment Harry keenly felt himself. "Which parts don't you understand?" his father said at last, settling on the bed near Harry.

"I mean...all of it. But I guess first is that a _man_ , this Dark Lord...he caught all of you? Made you leave?" Harry shook his head. "Wanted to kill you?"

Lily turned to him at this, half-smiling. "No, I expect you wouldn't understand that, would you? Here, it's…" she trailed off. With one hand, she toyed with a sprig of foxglove flowers. James habitually picked wildflowers for her on his way back from wherever he hunted in the woods. "Here, it's different. The only things that tries to kill you are monsters. Not people."

"Just because you didn't agree with him?"

James was rubbing the back of his head again. "That's sort of the gist of it, I suppose, but a lot went into it. None of us here agreed with him, nor did a lot of other people, but we were the ones who were the most... _in his face_ about it. And if he wanted to be a leader and show how strong he was, how powerful, he had to make an example of us. Had to make sure no one would ever fight him again."

"So he sent you here."

"So he sent us here."

"And the monsters…?"

"Those came around the time we did. He used this place to dump his rubbish, throwing in whatever he didn't want. And that was mostly monsters. Lethifolds, nundus, manticores, boggarts, dementors. You know those. We were out of the way, and—well, he bound our magic. You know that, too. Your magic is stronger than ours will ever be now. For us, here and without our magic, he must have thought it was certain death. That we'd die fast and bloody and afraid."

"But you didn't."

"No," James smiled. It was the kind of smile Harry had seen a few times when James had taken him hunting, an almost predatory grin. Something in it always reminded Harry of the crooked way a hidebehind would bare its teeth before it pounced. "There was a lot he hadn't counted on." Harry nodded slowly, but his father must have seen doubt in his eyes. "The first days happened like we've always told you," he reassured his son. "I just mean that Voldemort couldn't have predicted any of it."

Harry slowly nodded his head. "He sounds...mental."

"He was." Lily agreed. "Thinking back on it now, on what we lived through, all of it was mental. I know it sounds impossible, but because of how mad he was, he, Voldemort...I think he's the worst monster we ever faced."

It was such a precise echo of what Sirius had said earlier, about Bellatrix, that Harry stared. "But he was just a _man_. Why didn't you just kill him?"

James snorted. "I dunno, it...sitting here right now, it seems like that should have been easy, right? We've killed other monsters. But your mother's right. He's a monster of his own kind. We couldn't reach him easily; he never came to confront us in person. We only fought with others on his side. Besides, we were fighters of a different kind then. We didn't know the things we know now."

"Do you think you could do it now?"

His parents exchanged a look. Lily slid from the window and closed it behind her, arranging the flowers in her hand. "Now?" James said, blinking. "If what Bellatrix is saying is right...no. Now, we don't know anything. We've been out of the game for the last fifteen years…"

"Well, I guess I meant if you were like you are _now_ back _then_ —"

"Oh. Maybe," James said. He had pushed himself up to sit on the desk, and he leaned back to look at his wife.

"Definitely," Lily contradicted, setting the flowers down beside James on the desk. "We're different now. Stronger. He thought binding our magic and sending us here would weaken us, but if we— _all_ of us, as close as we are—if we'd been like this then, there would have been no one to stop us."

At this, his parents looked a little distant, and Harry wondered if they had ever voiced these ideas aloud before. James took Lily's hand and stroked it with his thumb. "It would have been different," he confirmed.

"And…" Harry hesitated. They turned to him, so he continued, in a smaller voice than he meant to: "If there really is a way out... _are_ we leaving the Keep?"

"No," they both replied at once, and then looked at each other. To Harry's exasperation, there was another of those moments in which some meaning passed silently between them.

"This is our home now," Lily said firmly. "In the first years, yes, we would have tried to leave. Merlin, we sent half a dozen scouting parties to the edge of the Ward. With the hills and trees—and all the things lurking in those woods, half of which we hadn't even seen yet—it took over a week there and back. It was so dangerous, but we kept _trying_. Remus, Marlene, and Sturgis went every time, being the ones who knew the most about runes and warding spells, but there was nothing they could figure out. And even if we'd figured it out, we didn't know if we could actually _use_ that knowledge, given our lack of magic...

"And we lost people out there on the way to get those three there and back safely. Good people. Edgar Bones, I don't think you were old enough to really remember him. Benjy Fenwick, and of course that's where Caradoc's little Benjy got his name. And then Frank. A rogue quintaped...You were six, I think, and when we had to come back and tell Alice what had happened." Lily blinked a few times, quickly. "Well, that was the last time. After that, we all decided we were done trying to leave."

"This is our home now." James said, once his wife had remained quiet for a few moments. "The people here in the Ward, we owe them everything. We've built a life here, different from what we used to know. But it's _ours._ Once, we might have owed the rest of the world something, but then they threw us here. They forgot us. To leave what we've built and return to whatever's left in the ashes...I think we'd be mad."

The pair of them fell silent. "Good," Harry said at last. "I don't want to go. I don't understand that other place, and it's not home. Not really." He paused. "What do you think will happen? With Bellatrix?"

"I don't know, love," Lily sighed. "It's hard to know if she's telling the truth. For now, she'll be locked in the top of the Keep, away from everyone. Aside from that...let's just take things one step at a time. She'll have to survive that wound before anything can be done one way or another. Beyond that, I really don't know."

Harry nodded slowly. For a few moments, the room was silent as they all let everything sink in, the sheer impossibility of the night's events. To Harry, it seemed incredible that just this morning, the Ward had been the same unchanging sanctuary it had been for the entirety of his life, complete and whole, its routines clear, its boundaries firm, its exterior virtually nonexistent. And now, so soon afterward, everything had changed.

It was still hard to wrap his head around it, and the idea that there was more beyond the Ward kept slipping in and out of his thoughts, loose and undefined, like the unfamiliar hilt of a new blade, not yet familiar to the touch.

His parents, though, were another story.

Harry couldn't read the message that had passed between them, but he knew what it looked like when they were afraid, when they were hiding something from him. It had happened less and less as he'd grown older and more sure of himself, as they'd seen his power begin to take shape, his growing cleverness with magic. But there had been times when he was younger when they shifted uneasily in his presence, their faces tight with the knowledge of some danger they wouldn't explain. Usually, this meant something out beyond the wall, menacing the woods nearby, and, for Harry, being restricted to the Keep itself until things were sorted. But more recently, they had always told him the source of their worries, named the creature itself that stalked their thoughts. Never in the past few years had Harry needed to press them for answers, and he found himself almost apprehensive at their silence.

"What else is there?" he asked. At some point, James had rested his head in his hands, and he didn't look up at the question. Lily was toying with the flowers again. "There's more, isn't there?"

"We're just worried about her, Harry," his mother told him. "She means a danger to us all, Harry. I know that's hard for you to understand, being—well, raised here, and only here. This is all you know. But for us, it's that it's so hard to tell what this means. There are so many things that could change now."

"And that's all?"

Lily looked up, as if surprised by the question. "Yes. Of course."

It wasn't all. He knew it. And after a moment, she seemed to realize this, for she stared away.

"Sorry," she said, but it wasn't clear what she was apologizing for. "You'd best get to bed, Harry. It's been a long day, and I've no idea what tomorrow will bring."

He bristled at being sent away to bed like a small child, and his mother's smile wasn't quite enough to mollify him. "You don't have to tell me the truth. But just...don't pretend everything's fine, ok?" Harry replied irritably.

Before anything else could be said, he bade them goodnight and closed the heavy wooden door behind him. _It's not that they're hiding something, not really,_ Harry thought. _Just that they're lying about it. To_ me.

The corridors of the Keep were dark at night, the tallow and beeswax candles conserved for areas where people were around. His parents and most of the others would have needed to bring a candle with them, but Harry cast a _Lumos_ charm, and a small pearl of light hovered just above his shoulder to light the way.

For the first time in a long time, he felt truly conscious of his own magic, a gift that had been taken away from his parents and every adult in the Keep. To him, it was who he was. To them, it was an old friend they'd lost. Looking at the bead of light in the air beside him, he wondered if the others ever watched him and Neville and Ginny perform magical spells with envy, sadness, regret.

The light bobbed in the air currents as he walked. He was going to sleep soon anyway, so there was no need to conserve his energy, but as he opened the door to his room, he let the spell fade all the same.

Or at least he went to bed. Sleep was another matter, and it was a long time in coming.

.

.

.

 **A/N:** Man, I love writing Bellatrix. And if she's ditching Voldemort, you know things have really gone to shit for the rest of the wizarding world.

Hopefully this chapter started answering some questions, although there's more of that to come...


	3. Transfigurative Trickery

.

 **The Ward**

 **Part Three**

.

 _Transfigurative Trickery_

 _._

A major, if implicit, truth of life in the Keep was the value of every second of light: the castle rose at dawn, people entered the woods only in daylight, and all of the outdoor harvesting, gathering, mending, farming, and hunting became impossible at nightfall. In the short days of winter, they scrambled urgently to finish everything needed for the Keep's continued survival. But now, in the lengthening days of the coming summer, their efforts were not nearly as strained.

Still, the main difficulty was in the nature of the Ward itself. _Muralis obscura,_ Bellatrix had called it, and Harry thought from some of his lessons in spellwork that part of that meant _dark._

That was fitting, because the Ward _was_ dark. It was a thin barrier that kept out foreign humans, foreign magic, and—unfortunately—some small percentage of the sunlight that shone over it. They constantly lost some of the light that could have been theirs, though they'd adapted over time, learning to move efficiently in the filtered light.

Harry wouldn't have known any of that, of course: he'd grown up here, and to him, the quality of light was what it always had been. Remus had been the one to explain it, how the sun was fainter here, like seeing candlelight through a thin swath of dark fabric. Remus, of course, had been the only person in the Keep who had, with any regularity, made Harry and the others his age sit down long enough to teach them anything. These lessons, which had transitioned from informal to formal as they'd grown, had mostly been about their magic and how to control it. The werewolf was the only adult patient enough to take the time to explain it to them. Or else, Harry thought, he was the only adult who'd found it within himself to overcome the bitter loss of his own magic enough to take on students. Sometimes, Remus taught them about the creatures within the Ward as well, or other things they needed to know. But sometimes, Harry and Neville and Ginny egged him into straying off topic, bored and childish and curious about nonessentials like that, about the world that was.

But from a practical standpoint, Molly was the one who really taught them the value of their time. The day began at sunrise, they'd learned, but this was from her clear expectation that everyone be present for breakfast at that time, or else the stragglers ate cold leftovers.

When Harry woke the next morning, having spent the previous night tossing and turning in bed, he couldn't remember the last time he'd woken so late that the morning light had gone hard and golden. His second thought was that he'd really rather skip breakfast than have Molly chide him about his punctuality. But his third thought was that Elphias had scheduled him on fishing duty again, and he'd rather not be both hungry _and_ up to his waist in cold water all morning if he could help it.

Fortunately, when he arrived downstairs in the kitchen, the only people in the room were Ginny, who looked as tired as he felt, and Hagrid, who was mending a broken chair at the back table. Molly was nowhere to be seen. Harry let out a guilty sigh of relief and strode toward the hearth to see what could be salvaged.

"Mornin' Harry," the half-giant greeted cheerfully, a few nails clenched between his teeth. He spat them into his hand, not pausing his work, and he didn't seem to take offense when Harry gave a sleepy grunt instead of replying.

"Yes, you missed the lecture," Ginny grumbled as he rummaged through a few of the earthenware pots and checked the hunter's stew, whose broth was simmering over a low flame. Her own plate was mostly empty, but she pushed around some scrambled duck eggs with her fork, absently scraping the plate now and then just for the sound of it. "She's gone out to the field with Marzanna, but she'll be back soon, so we'd best be working before she comes."

"Think she saved yeh something ter eat," Hagrid added, rising to his feet. He was clearing up his tools, and as he passed, he gave Harry a warm wink. "Righ' there, in the corner."

"Oh," Harry said, "Thanks, Hagrid!" He found what Molly had left him: a few rolls of crusty bread, leftover from the night before, wrapped in cloth. To his surprise, there was also some roasted deer, which he'd forgotten about—had that happened just yesterday? He certainly hadn't made it to dinner, and he was starving now. "Did you sleep at all?" he asked Ginny.

"Thanks, you look marvelous too," Ginny said wearily as he sank down beside her. "No, I don't think I did. My brain kept talking to me."

"Yeah, me too. Mum and dad laid it all out, and answered questions, but it still felt so…"

"Impossible."

Harry paused to chew the bread he'd stuffed in his mouth. "Exactly. Yeah, like I couldn't believe it. It all sounds like a story. One of Remus's fairy tales. Before they get butchered by Sirius, anyway."

Ginny was perfectly still. It occurred to Harry that she hadn't really looked at him since he'd walked in. "Mum and dad told me a lot, too," she said quietly. "Mum was crying. She said we had family out there. Or maybe 'have.' They don't know. But there were nine of us in all."

It took a moment for him to understand. " _Nine_ of you _?_ So—seven brothers and sisters?"

Ginny nodded slowly. "Just brothers."

Harry thought she was probably thinking of Ron. It had been eight years since Ron had died, since he and Ginny had briefly wandered from the field beyond the wall and into the woods, and only Ginny had come out. Ron had been ensnared and bitten by a venomous tentacula, newly sprouting and somehow overlooked in the regular surveys of the surroundings. They'd been too young to know what it was enough to fear it, then—or rather, they'd been deemed too young and had never been told. It wasn't until after Ron's death that the adults in the Keep had stopped coddling them, Remus starting their magical training and Lily teaching them about dangerous plants that sulked in the darkness of the woods.

Ron's death was a mistake that had taken everyone a long time to move past, as preventable as it had been. Molly and Arthur, of course, had been stricken particularly hard. Ginny had been virtually silent for months afterward.

And so Harry struggled to wrap his mind around this news that the Weasleys had lost much more than one child. The majority of the family was dead—or else lost to them forever. His chest felt tight.

"So," he said at last, when Ginny didn't respond. "Your mum and dad...they had to leave them? When they came here? Or—right, I guess when they were _sent_ here, I mean."

"Yeah. And I dunno why, it's probably stupid, but I can't believe they didn't tell me about them. I didn't know it wasn't just _me_. Not that it's replacing Ron, or...whatever." She shook her head solemnly. "I don't know."

"It's just one more thing on top of the whole 'everything's a lie' thing we were already dealing with."

"Yes." Ginny pushed the plate away from her. "There are just...too many things they left out. And I used to think I knew them, and that I knew everything _about_ them, but instead I've come out of it feeling like I'm an idiot and never knew anything at all. I'm sick of being treated like a child."

Harry didn't need to mention that they _were_ children in the eyes of the Keep: the two of them, along with Neville, Alba, and the littles, were the only ones to have been born in the Keep, the only members of a generation that knew nothing of the outside world. He and Ginny both knew it, and they keenly felt how it separated them from everyone else, like a tangible mark rendering them at once second-class citizens and precious cargo to be safeguarded.

"I don't know that there's any way to stop it," Harry said eventually, when the silence stretched longer. "I think all the stuff that happened yesterday will only make it worse. And…" he paused, unsure if he wanted to voice the rest, but at last he pressed on: "I don't think they're telling me everything. My mum and dad, anyway. There's more they're not saying."

"I just don't understand why they didn't just bloody tell us," Ginny scowled furiously. "It wouldn't have _changed_ anything, not really—we'd still be just as stuck here, and we'd still be doing the same things we do now, only we'd know the truth. We'd have _always_ known the truth. Was it just some stupid joke?"

"It wasn't meant to be like that," a voice said from the threshold of the room. Harry and Ginny both jumped, Ginny's scowl doubling at the sight of Gideon and Fabian.

For once, both the twins' faces were sober at the same time, which gave their words added sincerity. Whatever duty rotation they were on—probably farm work today, as Elphias usually liked to make sure people had a "break" in the Keep the day after hunting in the woods—they had already worked up a bit of a sweat. Their red hair was sticky with it, tied back into matching ponytails.

Gideon adjusted the strap of his bow to pull his shirt collar down a bit. "No one covered all this rot up out of malice," he explained.

"That's what mum and dad said, but…"

"Look, Gin." Fabian walked round to sit on the table behind them. "It was just easier this way."

"Would you have ever told us? Would anyone have?"

Gideon winced, but then he crossed his arms. "Not really our place to say. We went along with it, but it's mostly your parents—"

"Oh come off it, you're all our parents," Ginny retorted. "Practically, anyway."

"Sort of," Gideon agreed, quirking a smile that fled quickly. "But you have to remember that we're also just a group of people stranded somewhere we didn't want to be _._ Maybe not so much now...but especially at the beginning. It was _hard._ We'd lost our homes. We lost everything we knew. And we lost our families, all in the space of a few hours," he added, looking at his niece. "No one wanted to think about all of that when we got here, not once it was obvious we weren't leaving, and there was a ton we had to figure out really fast if we were going to survive, like food and shelter and weapons and...Well, once we gave up on getting out, it felt like there was no point in talking about all the shit we lost. And at some point, maybe a few years in, when you two were still tiny, way too small to remember, we just...stopped thinking about it. It wasn't as real for us anymore. _This place_ was. This life was."

"Actually," Fabian added thoughtfully, "it was one of you guys—think it was Neville, must have been when you lot were four or five. I remember him asking about what was outside of the Ward. And James just said 'monsters.' Sort of joking, but he wasn't wrong, really. And I think that's when it stuck. That became the truth. Some days, we almost believed it ourselves."

It was quiet when they finished. The twins looked drained, whether from their work or the conversation, Harry wasn't sure. On some level, he thought he got where they were coming from. It felt oddly better to know that there'd been no council meeting, no conscious decision about _"what lies to tell the kids."_ It had just developed slowly, like a puddle deepening in the rain, a way to live with the lot they'd been given.

Ginny was still scowling ferociously, but at least she was scowling down at the table now instead of directly at the twins. Gideon and Fabian seemed to take this as a good sign as well.

"Anyway, we didn't actually come here to mess with your worldviews and whatnot," Fabian said lightly, a half-hearted attempt at humor. He furrowed his brows, which made his long face look especially shrewd. "Where are you supposed to be right now?"

Harry and Ginny exchanged a guilty glance.

"Wheat fields," Ginny said tersely.

"Fishing," Harry added.

"Right. That was a trick question for you, Hal. We've come to gather you. We could use some of your transfigurative trickery."

Harry spared a thought for Neville, who was probably already hard at work—they were scheduled together again today, after all—but they were all used to being pulled out of rotation for odd jobs dealing with their magic.

"Sure you don't need any defensive trickery?" Ginny asked hopefully.

"Not today, spitfire," Fabian said, standing. Ginny's mouth curled in distaste at the nickname. "Go on—Alba was looking for you earlier to help her with the ducks. She's out at the pen now, last we saw."

Ginny rose from the table, her irritable heat leeching away. "Well, see you later, then," she said, and walked out toward the great hall.

When she had gone, Gideon jerked his head toward the stairwell. "Up we go," he said.

The Keep was set on a natural hill, and as such it was already a bit higher than anything nearby. But in addition to this, it rose twenty stories overhead. Mostly, this was empty rooms, with the exception of the lower few floors, in which lived the inhabitants of the Keep.

So when Gideon and Fabian kept climbing seven, eight, nine floors up, Harry realized with a cold thrill that they were going to the top of the Keep. No one climbed that high for a bunch of empty rooms—except if one of them wasn't empty. Except if you wanted to keep an outsider close at hand, but still as far away as possible.

By the time they reached the top floor, they were all three out of breath. "Does she really need to be this high up?" Gideon panted. "If she's going to try something, she can probably do it regardless."

"Talk to Moody about it," Fabian grumbled.

Harry, wide-eyed, said nothing. The corridor looked like all the others, uniform grey stones and windows at either end, near the stairwells, to let in the daylight.

Fabian turned to him. "Alright. I'm sure you've guessed we need your help with Bellatrix. We're right here with you. She's still half-dead, way too weak to try anything even if she had a wand, but we'll make sure nothing happens." At this last, he shifted a little to adjust the sword in the sheath strapped to his belt. Gideon had his bow, Harry realized suddenly, which should have struck him as odd before, given that they'd probably been doing farm work.

Harry was quite sure he wouldn't be here if there were even a remote possibility that they thought something might happen to him. Because if Harry was here, Moody and Remus at the very least had probably approved of it. And he wasn't afraid. It took him a moment to realize that he was almost _excited._

As dangerous as they all said this woman was, and as unpleasant and strange as she seemed to be...she was still the only connection he had with the world that was. The only proof that made it all real. He felt curiosity bubbling in him like a pot boiling over.

"Okay," he said. "What do you need me to do?"

"She's asleep," Gideon said, and as if to confirm that fact, he turned to slide open the little eye-level window that adorned all of the doors in the Keep. Harry couldn't see over his broad shoulders, but he assumed this was still true, as Gideon continued talking. "Has been since last night, pretty much. But we'd like some stronger restraints for her than the ropes you made for Sirius."

"Okay," Harry said, when both of them turned to him. "But what do you mean by 'stronger restraints?' Anything specific you can tell me about what they should be like?"

"I'll do you one better," Fabian said, and from his coat pocket, he drew two things: a folded piece of paper and a handful of iron nails, similar to the ones Hagrid had been working with earlier. Harry hummed in surprise.

"The nails are for material," Fabian continued. "There's more where these came from. And Sturgis sketched it out," he added as Harry unfolded the paper to find a drawing of a thick metal cuff drawn around a slender wrist. A heavy chain connected the cuff to a stripe of what looked to be metal, if Harry understood the grey shading.

"One for each hand and leg," Gideon added, coming to look over Harry's shoulder. "It should be bound to the metal bed frame. It's funny," he added with a snort. "We've never needed something like this here. Not till now, anyway."

"Did you need them before?" Harry asked curiously.

"Hm. Well, not _us,_ but—yeah, if you had a criminal you wanted to be sure didn't go anywhere, then this is what you'd use. The iron especially. It doesn't _really_ do much, but it does sap your magic a little if you're in contact with it for long enough."

"Weird," Harry replied, looking back down at the paper.

And then a curious thing happened: Fabian pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and muttered under his breath as he searched for the right one. To Harry's knowledge, no doors in the Keep had ever been locked—as a matter of fact, he'd practically forgotten they had keyholes to begin with. The only thing within the Ward that was regularly locked both by key and runic ward was one outlying building, a shed that had been familiarly nicknamed the Wolf Den or just the Den, as it was where Remus went when he transformed on full moons.

Harry said nothing about this, the strangeness of it all settling thick and heavy on his tongue. Instead, he just watched as Fabian finally found the proper key, twisted it off the chain, and pressed it into Harry's hand. "If you can, it would help if _that—_ " he pointed to a small keyhole in the drawing, "—matched this key."

"When we talked it over last night, no one was sure about that part," Gideon admitted. "It's tricky magic even when you've got a wand."

"I think I can do it," Harry said, his mind diligently organizing all he would need. He studied the key for a moment more, twisting it this way and that to understand its faces, to know what the lock would need to look like. "I'll try, anyway."

"Remus says you can do it," Fabian said knowingly.

Harry smiled. "Then I guess I can."

Fabian took the key back from him and unlocked the door. He strode inside with his hand on the hilt of his blade.

The room was, of course, empty of all decor, just four uniform walls and a window. On the single bed in the center of the room lay Bellatrix, looking even more sickly and pale than she had the last time Harry had seen her. Her eyes were shut, and she was even drooling a little, so Harry thought she probably really was asleep and not just pretending. Her arms were lashed to the bed frame with rope, one to each side, but her legs were unbound.

After a beat, in which the three of them stared down at the woman as though transfixed, Harry broke the silence. "Alright. Give me back the key and a quarter of whatever you've got."

Fabian passed it over and then drew up the bag of nails, pausing to estimate before awkwardly pulling out a handful for Harry. Gideon was at the woman's bedside, bow readied but lowered, and he gave Harry a nod.

Harry knelt down, placing the drawing and key on the bare mattress. He cupped both palms together and settled the iron nails into them, touching them to the bed frame at the woman's wrist.

Before any magic was cast, he pictured it all in his mind. Transfiguration worked to make changes in matter itself. And so Harry first had to imagine the shape of the final piece, smooth and unbroken, thick and strong, and also the keyhole as a perfect match to the puzzle of the key. At the same time, it required him to consider the binding of the molecules, joining everything together, all of it as natural and organic as though it had always existed that way since the beginning of time. This transfiguration was new to him, more detailed than most he did, and since there was no rush, he aimed to do it right. Sometimes, the words he needed for the spell came to him instinctively, allowing him to speak them aloud to ease the flow of magic, but sometimes he solved the magical riddle with his thoughts alone, guiding the spell where he needed it. This case turned out to be the latter.

At last, he let his power flow through him, controlling the flow carefully as Remus had taught him— _not a flood, just a stream._ The changes took the space of many breaths. He got a little lost in the complex magic, the way he sometimes did when he was concentrating just right, but when he felt the spell reach its completion, the new cuff lay heavy in his hands.

"Perfect," Gideon crowed, a little loudly, perhaps, but the woman didn't stir. "Does the key work?"

Harry tried it in the lock, which clicked open. Fabian took the cuff from his hands and closed it around the woman's wrist. "Good. Three more, then."

The next one was easier. Having done the first, Harry could draw up the image in his mind more easily, as though he were pulling the instructions from a drawer instead of writing them all down. He felt the magic leaving him, his strength wilting a little, but he knew from experience that he was well within the limits of his abilities—he had plenty more spells in him today besides just this, if need be.

When he drew back from the completed spell, he found find Bellatrix staring right at him. As far as he could tell, she hadn't moved at all. Her dark eyes were half-lidded, but still he felt like there was something very much alert in their depths.

"—should shut up," Gideon was growling.

"I only thought that's a pretty bit of magic," she protested weakly. "Wandless, too. Just think what _he_ could do with a wand…"

She said the last bit with a curious sort of hunger that Harry didn't understand. Her wand, what he understood to be the stick he'd mistaken for a twig the night before, was tucked away safely downstairs. But she hadn't taken her eyes off him _._

"Do the next one," Fabian ordered him. His face was set into a grimace, and his sword was unsheathed. Harry reached out for the next handful of knives.

"You do all of the magic here, since _they_ can't?" the woman murmured, watching him.

Harry hesitated, pulling the lock and the drawing toward the third binding at her left leg. "No," he said at last. "Only transfiguration."

"And why is that?"

Harry looked to the twins as he knelt. Their faces were set in stone. He closed his eyes and focused on the transfiguration, letting the magic spill carefully over the iron, feeling it stretch and shape itself. When he had finished a minute or so later, he answered her. "It's easier to specialize in one type of spellwork, Remus says. Like learning to play just one instrument instead of trying to learn them all at once. So I only do transfiguration, Ginny does defense, Neville does runes."

Mostly, this was true, if a bit simplified: Harry mended broken fences and plates, adapted rocks and stones into various farm tools, and only occasionally changed people's hair colors without their consent. (Rarely, because it drained much more strength, he conjured things that didn't already exist, like tiny flames to start fires in the cold of winter.) For Neville and Ginny, the story was similar. Neville maintained the wards and long-lasting spells on things that needed them, particularly the wall and the Wolf Den, and occasionally lay snares and traps in the woods to warn of intruding forces. Ginny got to attack things, which she quite enjoyed.

But for the most part, they weren't really supposed to use their magic if there was an easier or quicker way. You never knew when you might need your magical strength, when your life or the lives of someone else in the Keep might rely on your abilities, and so it was better to safeguard your power, just in case.

And besides that, there were some types of spells all of them could do: a few basic defensive spells were necessary for Neville and Harry, and all three of them were adept with Patronuses. Even Benjy and Alba could create passable ones. Remus had made sure they all learned the charm almost as soon as they understood what their own magic was. And though it was a grueling introduction to spellwork, it was also very much needed. None of the adults went into the woods anymore without a Patronus by their sides, as dementors and lethifolds were two of the few monsters that couldn't be fought back through non-magical means alone. It fell to the children, then, to ensure that their parents and the others were well-protected.

Bellatrix frowned thoughtfully. "If you had a wand, it wouldn't matter."

"But I don't have a wand," Harry replied, distractedly moving to her left hand for the final cuff. At some point, Gideon had moved beside him, probably trying to make more of a barrier between him and Bellatrix, but Harry ignored him.

"Only transfiguration, you said?" Bellatrix added. She sounded almost disappointed.

"Only transfiguration," he agreed, looking up at her dubiously.

"Hm," she said, mouth quirking into a smile.

"Harry," Gideon said, sounding strangled.

"Yep." Harry looked down at his hands, setting the last spell into motion. When the last cuff finally took shape, falling open with a satisfying click, he snapped it around Bellatrix's wrist himself. "Done."

"Good," Fabian replied. "Not to rush you, but this isn't exactly my favorite place to be on a sunny day. Shall we?"

Bellatrix muttered something that sounded like "It's not mine either" as Gideon and Harry followed him out of the room. Fabian shut the stone door.

The last thing Harry saw before Fabian slid the window shut was the woman stretched out on the bed, her eyes closed, face lit from the sunlight from the window. For a moment, she didn't look like an impromptu prisoner at all. Her new cuffs didn't seem to bother her. She looked peaceful, unworried, basking in something like prayer.

Fabian locked the door behind them.

.

The space between Harry and Neville was so companionable that Harry sidled up to his friend at the riverbank with no words spent between them.

It probably would have been hard _not_ to be this way, Harry thought. They were practically twins, born at almost the same time to different parents and raised together in the family of the Keep. Much of their rotation was done together, Elphias having noticed their unspoken rapport ages ago, the way Harry kept them curious and Neville kept them focused. The balance lay there between them, familiar and beyond doubt.

Their typical fishing spot was about ten minutes' walk from the Keep walls. Neville sat on a large stone where the river met the brackish pool of water they affectionately called Augurey Sound for its popularity with the nesting birds. The Sound separated itself into smaller outlets farther off, emptying out into the woods somewhere farther off, somewhere Harry and Neville had never been.

In some sense, Harry felt as though this place, the stream, was theirs—his and Neville's together. It was where they spent a few mornings each week, at least in the spring to autumn months, fishing and chattering about stupid things. In the shadowed cranny of the rocks, hidden by overgrown heather and low-reaching boughs, they had once sat together quietly for hours in silent vigil, Neville unable to speak about his father's death and Harry unwilling to push him to.

On this particular morning, Neville had already caught a fair amount of fish. One bucket was half-filled with silver-bellied things, and Harry thought he spotted the shell of a turtle as well, all covered by the icy cold water to preserve them for a bit longer. In the summer, the fishing was plentiful, enough that they needn't feel quite so rushed. Neville brought his fishing pole instead of a net today, watching the lure lazily as Harry approached. The sunlight dappled his dirt-brown hair and spilled over his slouched back.

Harry waded into the water. Spear-fishing wasn't necessary, of course, and line-fishing was arguably more effective, but it also put him to sleep. Letting himself adapt to the icy flow, he waded out a little, watching the dark shadows of fish move in the water beyond, and held himself still to wait.

Dragonflies buzzed nearby, flitting between the rocks at the lake's edge. The surface of the water below was partially darkened by the shadows of the tree branches above, but a few feet away, sunlight reflected in shimmering gold.

"When you were younger," Harry said slowly, "did you ever imagine you could actually see the monsters on the other side of the Ward?"

Neville hummed. "I suppose so. Yes. The way it sort of moves?"

At this, they both looked at the sky in the distance to the south, where the trees were thinner and they could see the dark sheen of the Ward.

"I always thought about that," Harry admitted. "That maybe, if you ever went all the way to the edge, you could see through more clearly. Maybe you could see what was out there."

"The monsters?"

"Yes. Or anything."

Neville didn't reply, because he was staring into the forest at his back, his face somber as he lowered his fishing pole. Harry knew that look: something had set off one of his surveillance runes, which he always lay nearby whenever they would be in one place long enough to require them. And then Harry heard it too, a quick rustle of leaves. Both of them were already on edge, and Harry knew that Neville must also be thinking of Bellatrix and her strange newness. The sound didn't repeat itself, but in the Ward, if you thought something was wrong, it probably was.

 _Constant vigilance,_ Moody said.

 _Nothing is nothing,_ Remus said.

There was another soft, muffled noise, and Harry spotted a flash of greenish-brown scales in the leaves, moving slowly. He groaned. "Kappa. Just a sec."

Neville turned back to his fishing. Harry set down his lance, conjured up a cucumber—as it was the only meal that could appease a kappa, the spell was practically second nature to him now—and flung it into the trees. The creature grunted, the leaves rustled once more, and then there was silence.

"They're multiplying," Neville complained.

"It's spring," Harry retorted, though he remembered it was practically summer now. He was still looking away, off in the direction the kappa had fled with its meal. After a moment, Neville realized this and craned his neck to look as well, though the trees probably blocked his view from where he sat.

"What is it?"

Just over the top of the trees, Harry could make out the upper stories of the distant Keep, the dark rows of windows and the ridges of its roof. At the corner, a few dementors huddled in midair, their cloaks flapping in the wind.

"Bellatrix," Harry said at last, and Neville rose, abandoning his post to look.

"Hm," he said unhappily. "Do you think someone knows?"

Bellatrix had no wandless Patronus, and while the dementors had quickly learned to leave the lower floors of the Keep alone, they obviously had no qualms about going after the defenseless woman in its upper tiers.

"Probably they do," Harry said at last.

Neville bit his lip. "Mum said a lot of stuff last night, but about half the time she was reminding me to be careful and keep to the rules, especially now."

"Like _you_ need to be told that."

"Obviously. But you know how she is, especially after dad."

"Yeah."

"So I'm not going with you...but I'll cover for you."

That was another thing Harry liked about Neville. Sometimes, he knew Harry's mind before Harry himself did. And it was obvious now that he _would_ go. Someone had to, if the adults were being too—what, vengeful?—to ask one of the kids to help. And between the two of them, or three of them, if you included Ginny, he was the most likely to get in trouble for doing something stupid like this. It was almost expected.

"The wards on her cell will hold, as long as the door's closed," Neville added. "It was a basic spell, but I did it myself. She's not going anywhere, even though everyone insists on checking up on her all the time. Just be quick about it: leave her a Patronus, and get back."

Harry nodded. He took his lance—Neville could always say he'd gone back to the Keep to get something—and stepped forward to pick his way through the beaten trail.

.

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 **A/N:** Hi I would like to formally register my own amazement that there's another chapter within like two weeks, thanks.

Also real talk I am long-winded AF...so sorry. But at least you can prepare for shit to go down next chapter, which is Coming Soon! (TM)

P.S. - The cucumber-deterring-kappas thing isn't made up - apparently it's a thing in the Fantastic Beasts book. Thanks, internet.


	4. Plagues and Sorrows

.

 **The Ward**

 **Part Four**

.

 _Plagues and Sorrows_

 _._

And so for the second time that day, Harry found himself outside the stranger's door.

Probably, he could figure out how to unlock it if he really wanted. He had seen the key that would open it, had created locks that matched it. But maybe, he thought, that was going a bit too far. Shackled or not, Bellatrix's presence was enough to set the entire Keep's teeth on edge.

Instead, he slid open the square window on the door. The room was nearly dark as night, but he could make out the supine shape of Bellatrix, who lay fixed on the mattress where they'd left her, looking even more like death than she had before. The window was almost entirely blocked by the black forms of the dementors, several of them pressing their rotted mouths to the glass, breathing deeply, feeding.

" _Expecto Patronum,_ " he whispered. A silvery stag burst forth, sweeping through the door as though it wasn't there at all. It bucked its head toward the dementors, stabbing furiously with its antlers, and their mouths stretched in wordless howls as they fled. The window cleared, and the room brightened. On the bed, Bellatrix panted, her face covered in sweat.

The stag turned about, circling the room. When it had deemed the space safe, it turned to face Harry, who shook his head. It settled into the corner of the room, folding its legs beneath it, to act as a silent guard until Harry called it back.

When he looked back to Bellatrix, she was staring at him. "Baby Potter," she breathed at last. "An honor." And then: "You did that without a wand?"

"Yes," he said, feeling exasperated by the constant question. "We all can." She said nothing in reply, so he elaborated a bit. "No monsters can enter the Keep, but the Dementors can get close enough that it doesn't matter. They can feed on you anyway. So we all know Patronus Charms. We send them out with people when they go into the woods."

Something about this statement set Bellatrix to laughing. It was a choking, grating sound. "So _that's_ how they survived then. Not by strength, but by _spawning_ it."

Harry's expression must have shown how offensive he found the comment, for she laughed even harder. "Alright. Alright," she said at last, curbing her amusement. "Thank you for the help." To Harry's continued annoyance, she said it facetiously, as if she'd been perfectly fine on her own, after all, and wasn't it cute that he'd come to help her.

If it was impossible for Harry to understand everyone's hatred of this woman, he thought he was beginning to understand, at least, their exasperation with her behavior. _Also_ , he thought, as she settled the same intensive gaze upon him, _I'm getting why they think she's so unnerving._

"Your parents didn't tell you much about me," she said.

He stepped little nearer to the window, leaning one shoulder against the door. "What do you mean?"

"Or else I don't think you'd be here," she continued, as if he hadn't said anything. "But they're probably suspicious as fuck. They've told you to leave me alone, I expect."

 _Not really,_ Harry thought guiltily. But only because they hadn't needed to. He knew it was expected of him, in the same way he'd be expected not to go after a quintaped alone in the woods.

"The real reason they're mistrustful of me, I'll have you know—well, one of many reasons, anyway—is because a part of them suspects I'm here looking for _you_."

The statement hung in the air between them for a moment, and it was so bizarre that Harry had to dissect it carefully for other meanings. Finding none, he just stared. "Me?"

"Do you want to know a secret?" Bellatrix asked, her smile growing conspiratorial. She had shifted forward in the bed, almost straining in her shackles to get closer. "I think I am."

"Why would you be looking for me?" Harry asked, bewildered. "You don't know me. I was born here, not before. We've never even met. You don't know anything about me."

"You _were_ born here, weren't you? Tell me—your Weasley girl, she's the youngest, I expect. You and the Longbottom must have been born first. Are you the elder?"

"Younger," Harry said slowly, unsure what it had to do with anything. "Only by a day, though."

"Born on the thirty-first of July, then?"

Harry frowned. "Who told you that?"

Bellatrix leaned back, a satisfied smirk curving across her face. "I told you," she said simply. "I've been looking for you."

"Why would you be?"

"You're someone special. Maybe not here, but on the outside—you're someone _very_ special."

Harry found this hard to believe. "Outside...no one knows me there. And I'm the same as everyone else here. Or, well, the same as Neville and Ginny, anyway."

She was shaking her head. "You're right, no one knows you outside, but maybe they ought to. And you're something... _more_ than your friends. Your parents already know."

At this, he couldn't help but hesitate. There _had_ been something, hadn't there? Last night, there had been something his parents hadn't wanted to tell him. Something in their vehement unwillingness to leave the Keep and venture back into the outside world. Maybe even something beyond a fear of the unknown and a simple attachment to this place, their home. Something more desperate. He stared at Bellatrix.

"Let me out," she said solemnly. "I can show you."

"I'm not an idiot."

"But you want to know what's different about you. You want to know what you are. You want to know your place."

Harry hesitated. She wasn't wrong, not really. Harry was nothing if not curious—about people, about the woods, about the monsters in them. If there was something strange about him, something that set him apart as different, the question of precisely what that difference _was_ would nag at him for ages.

At the same time, Harry was born and raised a child of the Keep, and like everyone else he knew, it was not in his nature to instinctively trust anything that came from outside of it. Especially if that something wanted him to leave not only the Keep but the Ward itself—which was entirely out of the question. "No. I belong here," he said at last. "I'm not whoever you're looking for. And even if I'd be someone else out there…" he shook his head. "It doesn't matter. This is my home."

Bellatrix rolled onto her back to stare up at the ceiling, resigned. "If you knew what was outside the Ward, what things are really like out there...you'd just have made that decision even faster," she said with a sigh. Without the masks she twisted her face into, she just looked wilted, like a devil's snare pulled out into the sunlight. "What will they do to me?" she asked at last.

"I don't know," Harry answered. "I don't think they know yet."

"I'm going to die here," she told him with certainty. "And out there, my family's going to die too. Not a surprise, really. The death part, anyway—knew that bit was coming soon. But I'd hoped we'd do it together. Me and Cissy, at least."

It was a strange idea to Harry that you might die alone, and so far away from your home. He'd never really known it to happen: sure, Frank had died out in the woods, far from Alice. And Ron—Ron had been at his sister's side when he died. But at least someone had been there for them both. At least they hadn't been alone in a sea of strangers. He felt a wash of pity for her roll over him, tied as she was to the bed, locked in an empty room away from any comfort.

He opened his mouth to say something—maybe something consoling, or at least it should have been that way. But what came out instead was, "What _is_ it really like out there?"

Bellatrix closed her eyes and smiled bitterly.

From somewhere far off came a reedy wail. It took Harry a moment to place the sound, which was thinned by distance. Finally, he recognized it one of Neville's runic wards, designed to shriek when something non-human, dementors excepted, crossed the wall. His stomach dropped as he rushed to the window by the stairwell, forcing it open and sticking his head out to peer at the ground below.

He had only rarely been up this high in the Keep before, and it took him a moment to orient himself, but he could see everything as expected on the grounds.

Nothing out of the ordinary. There was the Wolf Den, a squat building butting up against the east wall. One of the graveyards lay just inside the south gate. The wheat fields, shimmering like an ocean of gold in the sunlight, stretched round the side of the building to the vegetable gardens behind; there were also several sheds for food storage whose edges Harry could just see to his right.

A trio of augureys burst from beyond the Keep wall. He could see some movement in that area as well, people hurrying from the main door and starting round the side of the Keep—and there was shouting. At last, from the corner of the building, an enormous creature stalked slowly forward. Catlike, it was probably the size of a storage shed, or even larger, all tawny and covered with black spots...no, black spines, or possibly both. Whoever was already down there below—Harry could only see the tops of their heads—began to back away as it hissed, revealing putrid teeth that glinted a sickly yellow in the light. Its head expanded somehow, and then Harry realized it wasn't a head at all: it was a mane.

He swore under his breath and raced down the stairs two at a time.

Nundus had always been the adults' greatest fear. They were worse than virtually any other creature in the Ward. Harry remembered Hagrid telling him once how they had tried to scour all of the land in the early days, tracking and killing any nundus they found, wiping out litters of them before they could even reach maturity.

A nundu's power lay not in its size, though it was larger than most things they faced here, save the small dragon they'd barely managed to kill when Harry was young. The true terror lay in its pestilence. Nundus spread disease, leaking it through the quills lining their bodies and spraying it out with every breath. And while everyone here could fight physical creatures, plague was something they were poorly equipped to deal with.

By the time Harry had made his way downstairs, his insides were in tight knots. He nearly ran into Alba as he sprinted from the stairwell. Her face was already wet with tears as she hurried past.

"Harry!" He whipped around to find Remus coming up behind. The werewolf had wrapped cloth around his mouth and nose so that only his green eyes showed, glinting shrewdly beneath a few stray locks of hair. He clutched more cloth in his hand, towels from the kitchen, and held one out to Harry. "For what good it will do."

Harry tied it tightly around his mouth and nose and hurried to follow Remus to the door. "What's the—what do we do with it?"

"We've got to get it away from the Keep before we kill it," the werewolf said grimly. On his back, he wore his heavy axe. It was a weapon Harry rarely saw, though he knew from experience that with Remus's strength, he could do great damage with it. "At least outside the wall. The ground where it falls will be poisoned, and it'll let more into the air when it dies. We'll need Ginny to do the pushing."

A thought flitted quickly through Harry's mind, a sudden burst of fear. Not something from the nundu's plague, but from the icy certainty that people were going to die. Even when they brought the creature down, as he knew they would, it was sentencing them all to waste away right behind it.

Death lay in the air all around them. They were breathing it in even now.

Remus seemed to understand the change in him, for he paused to grab Harry's shoulder once they had raced down the front steps and onto the grass. "Hey," the werewolf said, pressing a few of the cloths into Harry's hands. "We're alive yet."

Harry nodded, swallowing. In the distance, many of the adults of the Keep, or at least the roughly three dozen or so most equipped for fighting, were at a standoff with the nundu, which growled angrily, a low rumble that Harry thought he could feel in his legs. They seemed to have gotten the message that it was crucial to get it out of the Keep, as he saw some of the group slowly pressing forward, aiming to get the creature to retreat.

"Shields steady," Moody was shouting, glass eye going wild. "Don't surround it, stay toward the Keep, Em. Steady on, nothing yet—long-range further toward the Keep—"

That was Harry, as well as Ginny and Hagrid and Gideon and a few of the others with bows or crossbows. Remus had slowly picked his way through to the front of the crowd, practically shoving the cloths at people as he went. Harry made his way to the back of it and saw to it that the others at long range covered their faces.

The line in front—Fabian and Lily, Ralf and Alice, Clary and Sturgis and Emmeline—pressed their blades forward, and those behind them did the same. As they paced very slowly forward, covered by their shields, their swords rose like teeth from gums in a protected metal jaw. The nundu growled low, pacing uncertainly without surrendering much ground.

"Good, good," Remus called. "Keep to the line!" Murmurs rose from a few people, or maybe oaths or prayers. The nundu was growling more heavily now, unappeased. It roared once, soundly, right in the faces of the first line.

From somewhere beside him, Ginny shouted some spell, and the beast rocketed back several feet, as though punched by a giant hand.

Before it could fully recover, Emmeline and Alice were upon it, their long lances extended to press the nundu back once more. Roaring in confusion, it stumbled toward the wall—not in retreat, just reconsidering. It crouched, hindquarters tensed like a fox about to spring, and Harry was ready for it, the spell he needed— _collisea parcis_ —at the forefront of his mind. He spoke the words aloud, and his legs became the conduit, or so he imagined, the magic rushing out of him and into the ground below. Just in front of the first line, the earth thrust itself upward like a grassy wall, right in time for the nundu to crash into it, howling. By the time the mound settled itself back down, the nundu had retreated again, uncertain, hackles still raised.

It wouldn't be enough. The nundu was fast, and Harry could tell—they all could tell—that it was smart. Studying them, making moves to test the waters. To walk the fine line between pushing it back and absolutely not killing it on this side of the wall...it would be too slow, just two steps back at a time. It would give the thing too many opportunities to sink its rotting teeth into someone's head.

"Harry—" Ginny began.

"Yes," he replied, realizing that they had both come up with the same plan at once. Maybe others had seen it too, but he wasn't sure. "You and me."

"They're going to kill us," she grumbled. "It goes against the game plan."

The "game plan" being the mandate that Harry and Ginny and Neville were to remain in the back as long-range fighters while everyone else took the main defense. This was something the three of them had never formally agreed to, but it had nevertheless passed down from on high and had been strictly followed the handful of other times that something serious enough to warrant everyone's attention wandered too near the Keep.

The issue with this plan was the obstruction that the front line presented during an attack. It was difficult to do any truly destructive or dangerous spells if the people you loved might be in the way. The last time Harry had brought this up, probably a few years ago when he'd barely been able to do any real transfiguration, Remus had deemed it an acceptable problem to have.

"I'd rather you have a hard time attacking than fight in the front and be dead for it," the werewolf had said bluntly.

It wasn't a surprise, really. Neville, Ginny, and Harry were, of course, children. Having babysat them, played with them, disciplined them, and watched them grow older, the general population of the Keep was fiercely protective of them. Besides this was the stolidly practical consideration that as the _eldest_ of the Keep's children, they represented a source of magical power that was impossible to regain quickly if things went south. The next closest in age, Benjy and Alba, would need several more years before their magic and spellwork had advanced enough to provide any real benefit or protection.

"I think this time we need our own plan," Harry told Ginny as the nundu snapped its massive jaws, just missing Rolf's shoulder.

"Let's," said Ginny, and she darted toward the second line, Harry at her back. They pressed through the others, Harry ruefully shoving Dedalus a little to get by. There was a shout of alarm as they pushed through the first line, dodging past shields and blades; Harry felt someone's fingers just slip past his shirt in an aborted grab. And then they were through. To be safe, Harry half-turned and transfigured a second little hill, pulling a long wall of earth up behind them just over head height, enough to slow the adults down by forcing them over or around.

" _Confringo!_ " Ginny shouted, and a blaze of fire sliced through the air, knocking the nundu backward. It howled in pain and fury at this new and unexpected attack. Shaking its mangy coat to rid itself of the last of the ash and flames, it darted forward in a wild rush.

Harry managed to conjure a shimmering silvery shield, large enough for the both of them. There were screams from behind, and once the nundu was far enough away, a few arrows burst through its back. The others were catching up.

Moody was yelling something like "You bloody idiots—" but Ginny wasn't listening. Another blasting curse shot through her, and Harry blocked the nundu's sideways retreat—which would have been toward the storage huts—with another wall of earth.

"Stay behind!" Harry warned Emmeline and Sturgis, who were pressing too close forward. "We can't do it with you in front of us!"

The orange glow of another _confringo_ lit their faces. Briefly, Harry locked eyes with his mother, whose shield and sword were raised, though she obediently stayed back, looking torn.

"Don't let up!" cried Alice. "Hit it faster, get it back!"

Blasting curse after blasting curse. Steadily, Ginny pushed at the nundu, Harry alternately corralled it toward the open north gate with walls of earth or conjured his shield to defend them from its lunges.

It was exhausting work. Not just for the sheer number of spells, but for their magnitude. On a daily basis, Harry and Ginny rarely needed to draw this much magic, and after just a few minutes, they were sweating heavily with exertion. Harry regretted wasting his magic earlier on those stupid chains for Bellatrix, who obviously didn't require them; he was going to need every drop of magic he could bear for this.

At last, the nundu was through the gate. Harry and Ginny, both panting, stepped through it as well, into the tall grass of the open field that lay between the Keep and the woods. The nundu's shoulder and the left side of its coat were singed a deep back and littered with faint, half-glowing embers; its eyes were hot with hatred, deep pits that fixed themselves on Harry and Ginny. It had stopped its sprinting attacks but still would not go. Harry had entertained the brief fear, when they first began the attack, that it might flee to lick its wounds and return another day, but he saw now that it had been too heavily provoked, too enraged, to let their affront stand.

If it lived, it would kill them all. If it died, it might kill them all anyway. For the barest of moments, Harry could feel rather than see the others' presence behind them, feel their eyes on his back, the heat of them somehow pressing in. He could sense their worry. Their despair.

The nundu made a sudden leap toward them. Caught somewhere between a shielding spell and his horror at the hatred in the nundu's gaze, Harry shouted " _Flagittari!"_ From his pointed hand sprang a rain of arrows, straight into the creature's eyes.

It keened in pain again, and this time, the noise was high and shrill, like the yelp of a dog. He'd got it straight in one eye and at the corner of the other; blood leaked over its face, black and glistening. Blinded, it crouched low to the ground and flexed its ears toward them.

"Careful, Harry," Remus warned softly, grabbing the back of Harry's shirt and gently pulling him toward the wall. The man looked more wolfish than human now, his gaze intense as he watched the nundu's every movement. "Let us do this part."

It was only then that Harry finally felt exhaustion seeping into his bones, like pain that came only a few seconds after the slip of the knife. One leg trembled for the briefest instant. Ginny, too, was being pulled behind the line of defense, her face almost feverish.

Following behind the werewolf, the others crept slowly around Harry and Ginny, smooth as water through rocks in a stream. The fighters were nearly silent as they slipped over the grass to surround the beast, weapons gleaming and faces stony. On his way past, James nudged Harry's arm, either in approval or out of a desire to break his neck for the stunt. Maybe both.

Knowing his limits, Harry was sure he'd be of no use among their number. But he wouldn't go back, to the Keep either: he had another spell or two in him if he needed it.

The nundu burst into movement, darting toward Caradoc, who expertly raised his shield overhead to block its snarling jaw, though it knocked him almost to the ground. Shouts of alarm sounded, but Harry couldn't make out much in the resulting chaos. Swords were raised, and orders bellowed all at once. There were too many moving parts, and in the midst of it, over the ring of heads, the nundu gnashed its teeth like a demon.

Harry turned away, hurrying toward the gate. "C'mon, up the wall," he said to Ginny, who followed him wordlessly. Just inside the gate, there rose a wooden ladder, a shortcut to the top of the wall for those who didn't want to walk round to the stone stairs farther off. They clambered up, one after the other, for a better view of the skirmish.

Moody had rallied them, it seemed, and the nundu was already sporting various cuts. "Confuse it!" he cried, slicing at its hind leg with his own sword. "It's blind, attack it from all sides!"

"Lances and longswords, focus on the neck!" Sirius called from somewhere in the chaos.

Emmeline and Alice, whose long lances made it easier to lunge without getting too close, appeared on the front line. Beside them were Ralf and Dorcas with their longswords.

It was rare that Harry had the opportunity to see the adults fight like this; very often, they did so in the depths of the forest on hunts the children were not yet invited to attend. But the next several moments reminded him just how proficient they were, how deadly in their own way. They worked with unspoken trust between them, wordlessly shielding each other and then lashing out as if listening to instructions Harry couldn't hear. It was an efficiency borne of experience, and Harry felt as awed by it now as he had when he was younger and still learning to manage his own blade.

Even now, with a creature that darted between them swiftly, howling and snapping and lunging, they were steady and cool, almost single-minded in their attacks. Hagrid had loosed more arrows into its shoulder, eventually abandoning his crossbow for the mace he carried on his back. Alice managed a blow to the neck, which Dorcas followed up swiftly with another, deepening the wound before dodging the nundu's snapping jaws. The others were shouting and slicing at it, making noise to distract it in its blindness.

Harry, studying the arrows peppered into the nundu's flesh, had a thought. He felt less like he might collapse, and though it was a distant transfiguration, and on something he wasn't even touching, he managed to slowly change one of the arrows nearest the neck, focusing on setting it aflame. The creature roared again, its throat boiling, legs giving out as it collapsed onto the grass.

In its moment of weakness, Alice and Emmeline were there, lances at the ready. They sliced into its heaving throat even as it growled and raged, blood spilling out onto the earth. And then there it lay, heaving one final breath, two—and it was gone.

There was a long pause, all of them panting in the silence that followed. The ensuing celebration was subdued, no less fierce and joyful for the hush that had fallen over them. Quiet thumps on the back, relieved and wheezing chuckles. Gideon and Emmeline hugged each other; Harry's parents had grabbed each other's hands. Alice looked as if she were blinking back tears.

Amidst it all, Harry saw everyone doing the same thing he himself was. They looked wordlessly about themselves, tallying the bites and scratches. With any other creature, these wounds wouldn't matter, but here, it meant everything. The nundu's poison, clawed into their loved ones' very veins. They all might die, but these people would die faster: Emmeline, Marlene, Clary, Gunter, Sturgis. And, Harry realized, a well of fear seizing in his chest, his father.

At his side, Ginny was thumbing a scratch on her arm, a slice of red that was bleeding into the fabric of her sleeve. "When did you—?" he began.

"I wasn't quick enough," she said quietly. "It was just a little bit faster."

They said no more. No one did. The death sentence was too new to sink in, to feel like the truth. Harry and Ginny climbed down the ladder to rejoin the others.

"We need to know if we missed more of them," Moody was saying below.

"Not sure it matters now," Remus said. "If more come, they come. But we've got other things to worry about."

"Do you think we brought it here?" Harry could barely hear his father over the murmurs of the crowd. "Did we provoke it somehow, looking for that manticore? Or—Merlin, we only saw the paw prints and _thought_ it was a bigger manticore than usual. Were we tracking that nundu the entire time?"

"Probably so. It could have been upset with us encroaching on its territory, maybe it tracked us back by smell once we got back to the Keep yesterday. But it also could have been Bellatrix," Remus said, shaking his head as the expressions of those around him darkened. "Not in the way you think. She was bleeding when Sirius brought her in, and she must have bled all the way here. That could be enough to do it."

"Fuck," Sirius swore, running a hand through his hair. "Fuck."

"There's no way to know, Sirius," Remus said, obviously regretting the bluntness of his words. "And besides that, it hasn't been a problem before. Nothing else out there would track us by that little blood alone, Even red caps would have needed more blood spilled to track her here. And we thought the nundus were gone. We all did."

There was nothing more to say. Hagrid and a few of the others muttered something about getting firewood to burn the creature's remains, and that broke the spell. As they walked back to the Keep, they all pretended not to see Clary's tears as she swept her dark hair from her face, or the way Caradoc wrapped his arms around Marlene and pulled her close.

From the lowest windows of the Keep, Benjy and Alba watched them approach, their faces pale. The youngest children—Harry could make out Peony and Lia at least—were barely tall enough to see over the windowsill.

Neville stood at the entrance of the Keep. Harry realized Remus must have thought to have him use his runic spells to safeguard the Keep, probably rendering it airtight for the time it took the best to stop spewing its disease, not that it mattered now. As the crowd moved up the stairs, Neville's eyes found his mother, dashing forward to hug her tight to his chest.

It was likely that those in the Keep would survive. The food preserved in the kitchens would be fine, and Harry had the feeling that if Remus had thought to have Neville safeguard Keep, he would have done the storehouses as well.

As for the rest of them, there was no telling. Whatever was fated to happen would take its course no matter what they did. There was no cure for a nundu's poison.

.

"We don't know anything for sure yet," Lily told him, much later that evening.

In an attempt to pretend everything was normal, or at least an attempt to enjoy the same diversions they always had, most of the residents of the Keep were in the great hall, as was typical on a summer's evening. If Harry ignored the bandages, or the way they clustered more closely together than usual, he might have believed it was any other night. Sturgis and Neville talked about archaic runes at a table layered with maps of the Ward, Clary bounced Peony on her knee, Marzanna and Emmeline sang aloud to Dedalus's harp. Ginny and her father laughed in the corner, heads bent together over some shared joke.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked at last.

Lily hummed. "The land here is poison. Almost literally. We've grown used to the way things are here, but...many of the things we eat are a little poisonous anyway. Half of the mushrooms, wild sweet peas, some of the other beans and legumes that grow here. A lot of our crops. It used to make the more sensitive people sick, before we got used to it. We used to think the ground itself was poisoned here."

Harry frowned. "So you're saying…?"

"I'm saying...we're a sturdy bunch. And we'll have to wait and see," Lily replied. She had her back to the inside of the Keep, staring instead out of the window at the growing darkness. Harry turned to join her, searching for whatever had caught her eye. He didn't need to look hard: just on the other side of the wall, off in the distance, was an orange glow that spat tongues of yellow into the air, letting grey smoke curl into the sky above. "There's no cure for the poison here."

The way she said it was odd. Wistful. Harry seized on the last word _._ "But maybe there is one out there?"

For a long moment, she said nothing. It was as though she had frozen, or come suddenly undone. "There is," she said at last, turning to him with something regretful in her gaze. "But we won't look for it."

"Why not?"

"Dying is more of a sure thing if we leave than if we stay," she said slowly, as if reciting something she'd heard someone say. "If we make ourselves known outside the Ward, if anyone finds that we're alive...it'll destroy everything. They'll come here and murder us all. If we stay, at least some of us might live."

Neither of them had to say anything, but Harry knew they were both thinking of James. His father was still discussing the events of the day in a low voice with some of the others, long after Lily had tired of it. Harry was as aware of his father's presence in the crowd as he was the position of his own limbs.

"It will take a week or so to start. And a few weeks to disappear. A few weeks before we know for sure what will happen." Her voice shook only a little. Harry took her hand.

On the other side of the wall, shielded by stones, the fire glowed orange into the depths of the night.

.

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 **A/N:** God, I love the original Order. I like to imagine them as a really tight family, where it would have been hell every time one of them died. I'm so sorry for putting you guys through that again 3

In other news, updates every two weeks? I'm astounded. ASTOUNDED.


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